Prescience
by MarieMaea
Summary: Heero Yuy, Second Seer to King Zechs, must undertake an epic quest to find and tame a SeerBound, his soulmate, without whom he is unable to see the future. However, finding and taming this creature provides a few unexpected twists and turns, even for one who always lives one second in the future. Yaoi, 1x2, 3 4.
1. Prologue

Prescience (noun)

Knowledge of events before they take place; foreknowledge - Collins English Dictionary

Foreknowledge of events: a) divine omniscience b) human anticipation of the course of events - Merriam-Webster Dictionary

And oddly enough, the most apt:

Knowing before everyone-else, i.e. being a smart-ass - the kind of word utilised by someone who spends a considerable amount of time perusing large dictionaries in the hope of coming across obscure and rarely spoken words that they can try and integrate into their everyday conversation in order to impress his/her colleagues/friends - The Urban Dictionary

I will warn you - this does start out as one of those "Rescue poor little abused Duo" fictions. If that appeals to you, you'll like this. If you don't like that, you'll still like this, because this poor little abused Duo is going to confuse, startle, and amuse you at every turn.

Prepare to be confused. This is one of those stories where you're not going to have any idea what's going on until about halfway through/nearly the end. (Neither is poor Heero, btw) It's going to be shorter than MoonChild, though. Don't worry about that.

Also a quick note - due to so many reviewers commenting on it - the mission monologue will continue along the story, but way, waaaaay more tame than in the prologue. Think of it like chapters. Every mission is a new chapter in Heero's life. We go through a whole heap in this prologue because Heero's life has already had a fair few chapters :P

* * *

**Prologue - Prescience**

_Primary mission: Survive life as an orphan living on the streets._

_Mission accepted._

_Secondary mission: Get a good night's sleep, for once._

_Secondary mission failed._

_Primary mission interrupted._

_Excerpt: _I remember being captured at eleven years old. At the time, I thought the men chasing me were doing so because I'd stolen a jar of honey.

As it turns out, they were chasing me because I was a Seer, thus, property of the King.

_Primary mission addendum: Escape captivity, go back to living on the streets._

_Primary mission addendum failed._

_Excerpt: _I had been tracked by the other Seer - there must always be two, I was told - who had volunteered his services to the King. He was ten years older than me, with hair over one side of his face, and a haunted, lonely look. He explained to me why I could always see one step ahead, why I never lived in the present, only ever one second in the future. I am a Seer, blessed with visions of the future and the prescience to see things before they happened.

_Primary mission addendum: Use this Seer to learn to be a better Seer so as to use my abilities as a Seer to escape captivity and return to the original mission. _

_Secondary mission: Get a good night's sleep, for once. There's a comfortable bed here that could fit ten of me. Surely I can get a good night's sleep on this._

_Secondary mission failed._

_Primary mission addendum redacted._

_Primary mission redacted._

_Excerpt: _As it turned out, being property of the King included the title of Lord and the ability to order people around. That sounded like it could be interesting.

_New primary mission: Survive life as Lord Heero Yuy, Second Seer to King Peacecraft._

_Mission accepted._

_ Secondary mission: Get a good night's sleep._

_ Secondary mission failed._

_ Secondary mission: Get a good night's sleep._

_ Secondary mission failed._

_Secondary mission: Take over First Seer Trowa Barton's duties temporarily while he searches for his "Seerbound"._

_Secondary mission addendum: Find out what a "Seerbound" is._

_Excerpt: _It took Trowa only two days to find his Seerbound, a young noble boy by the name of Quatre, who was dragged to the Seer's tower kicking and screaming. He continued this behaviour for three days straight. No one got any sleep.

Quatre, as a Seerbound, is also property of the King. He didn't take it as well as I did, and he certainly didn't volunteer for it like Trowa. Quatre's purpose, as Seerbound, is not to foretell the future, like us, but to submit to Trowa so that he might sustain his ability to See.

It has something to do with magic liking dominance and/or submission. One should never assume that a force they do not know or understand is not a kinky bastard.

Trowa had reached the peak of his Seeing ability, and the magic had given him a dream of his Seerbound. He did not give me details of the dream, only that he was in love with the boy he dreamed. He instantly was. That's how it works. Seers don't get to choose who they love, the magic does, and it shows them to us in a dream.

Then it halts all our Seeing ability, funnels it into dreams of our Seerbound, and won't stop until we find them. This was confusing and somewhat disappointing to learn. I didn't like the idea that my magic could dictate who my soul mate would be.

_Secondary mission and addendum complete._

_Secondary mission: Get a good night's sleep, for once._

_Secondary mission failed._

_Secondary mission: Make Quatre stop yelling in the middle of the night so that I can get a good night's sleep._

_Secondary mission failed._

_Secondary mission: Never let Quatre throw a vase at me again._

_Secondary mission in progress._

_Secondary mission: Take over Trowa's duties. Due to the reluctance of his Seerbound, his ability to See has been quite drastically reduced._

_Secondary mission addendum: Mediate between Trowa and Quatre. There is a reason there are two Seers. It's too much work for me alone._

_Secondary mission addendum failed. _

_New secondary mission addendum: Never yell at Quatre again. It's not his fault he was dragged here against his will. _

_Secondary mission addendum in progress._

_Continue secondary mission._

_Tertiary mission: Get a good night's sleep, for once._

_Tertiary mission failed._

_Secondary mission addendum: Try harder. The King nearly got knifed today._

_Secondary mission addendum failed._

_Secondary mission addendum: The King has a scar because I can't do this all on my own. I need to make Quatre grow a pair and fall in love with Trowa already._

_Secondary mission addendum failed._

_Secondary mission addendum: Never let Quatre punch me in the face again. Find out why he is always one second ahead of the one second ahead of time that I am._

_Secondary mission addendum in progress._

_Tertiary mission: Get a good night's sleep. How can I not sleep when I'm so exhausted?_

_Tertiary mission failed._

_Tertiary mission: Get a good night's sleep._

_Tertiary mission failed._

_Tertiary mission: Please let me sleep tonight._

_Tertiary mission failed._

_Tertiary mission: Please?_

_Tertiary mission in progress._

_Excerpt: _I woke up to green grass, and a hazy feeling, as if I were not truly where I thought I was. I reasoned that I wasn't, as I was very prone to out of body experiences and prophetic dreams. I hoped this one would be simple. I just want to help the King out of whatever mess is headed our way, and go back to sleep.

As I sat up in the grass, I realised it was a different kind of grass to the ones near the castle. Lighter green, and softer.

Then I noticed I was not alone.

Then I noticed that I was in love. There was a squeezing in my heart muscle and an undeniable desire just to stare at the creature of pure magnificence in front of me.

He was pure perfection, with beautiful toned skin and thick, long chestnut hair. The bulk of it was tied back in a single long, thick plait, but the sides were tied in myriads of tiny little thin braids, flapping in the wind, in a style I knew was common for an Amraki priest.

I was to go west to find him.

He was standing, away from me, staring out across the plains, with his thin arms crossed about his chest, his pose displaying tenseness and sullenness.

I knew what that meant. He already hated me. He hadn't even looked at me and he already hated me.

Quatre is not the only one. For as long as anyone can remember, and as long as the history books will tell, no Seerbound has ever loved, submitted to, or accepted their Seer.

He seemed to notice my presence, and he turned to face me, his arms still about his chest. His face only made me love him more, angry and tense as it was.

His eyes were purple. That only happens in the south.

I had to go southwest to find him.

"You're beautiful," I said.

He huffed, and stuck his chin in the air. "I am," he admitted tersely. "But I won't be for long."

"Why not?" I asked, slowly picking myself up off the grass, trying to keep him talking. His voice was like music to my ears.

He huffed again. "It's none of your business," he said snippily. "But in my experiences, corpses are never beautiful for too long."

"You're dying?" I asked, feeling a sudden rush of urgency I hadn't felt before. I knew that it was urgent whether he was dying or not. The King needed a Seer, always, preferably two. With me out of the picture, looking for my Seerbound, he would have to rely on Trowa's now meagre capabilities.

I didn't care about that anymore. This person, this man that I loved, needed me before he became a corpse.

The beauty in front of me sighed. "You've got two weeks to save me, else I'll die on you. Your deadline is three hours past midnight in precisely fifteen days. Hurry the fuck up."

The dream promptly ended and I woke.

_All tertiary missions and tertiary addendums redacted._

_All secondary missions and secondary addendums redacted._

_Primary mission redacted._

_New primary mission: Get to my Seerbound before Death does. _

_Secondary mission: If I get there quick enough, he might perceive it as a rescue instead of a capture. And if that happens, he might love me back._

_Mission accepted._


	2. Primary Mission: Finding Duo

Also a quick note - due to so many reviewers commenting on it - the mission monologue will continue along the story, but way, waaaaay more tame than in the prologue. Think of it like chapters. Every mission is a new chapter in Heero's life. We went through a whole heap in the prologue because Heero's life has already had a fair few chapters :P

**Primary Mission: Finding Duo**

**Trowa  
**

Quatre, thankfully, slept through Heero's rabid banging on my door. Quatre can sleep through anything and everything, and that is one of the only things that keeps me from beating him to death.

He is loveable and beautiful when asleep, and only when asleep. When awake, Quatre makes me want to kill him.

We sleep in separate beds due to his inability to keep from trying to kill me in my sleep. We at least share our hatred of one another, but I have not tried to murder him as he has me.

He could sleep through armaggeddon and still look like a sleeping angel, calm, quiet, and innocently sprawled all over the bed. It is the only time he can ever seem beautiful to me anymore.

I used to love him, I truly did. With every fiber of my being, I loved him, as I hunted him down. When I dragged him from the basement his father kept him locked up in, I loved him. When he fought me, kicking, screaming, and pleading, I loved him. When he tried to escape me, I loved him. When he refused to sleep in my bed, even platonically, I loved him. When he held my throat in his hands and squeezed, I loved him. Heero came to my rescue, having forseen that happening slightly before it was too late.

I loved him until time took its toll. Now, Quatre is but a shadow, a hollow, evil, angry, seething demon that wants nothing but vengeance on me. But when he is asleep, I love him dearly.

Quatre slept through Heero's insistant, urgent knocking on the trapdoor that lead into my half of our shared quarters. We live in the tallest tower of the castle, our rooms each a cemicircular room with a shared wall and a circular slanted roof. Beneath us is our shared common area, a large, circular, tiered place. To reach my room to knock on my door, he had to climb down circular stairs, then up the stairs next to them, to rap incessantly on the trap door above his head.

Before I opened the door, I received a premonition of double vision. One of my eyes saw my hand opening the door, to see Heero's face, and the other saw through the door and watched him visibly jump as I opened it, as if he were highly surprised that I had.

The two formed a very blurry vision of the present and future as I opened the door, and, to my confusion but not to my surprise, Heero jumped.

It is very hard to surprise a person who lives one second in the future at all times, as Heero does, so I was rather confused when I surprised him.

He contained it very well, considering it must have been the first time in his life he had ever truly experienced a thing without knowing the thing was about to happen.

I was very confused until he looked me straight in the eyes with his highly well known furrowed brow and glare, said "I'm blind," then walked away.

_Oh shit._

I followed him downstairs, making sure to lock the trapdoor - Quatre must always be locked in when alone.

He turned to me and clenched and unclenched his jaw. "Is it supposed to feel this way?" he asked.

The mere fact that he was asking told me, with complete certainty, that he had definitely dreamed of his Seerbound, and that he was feeling the exact same thing that I had. "Yes," I said. "It is. Now go downstairs, write down _every little detail_. I'll go get the forces ready. The earliest you can leave is the day after tomorrow -"

"This morning."

"We can't rally that many people that fast - "

"He's dying. I am on a deadline. He may be outside this Kingdom, at the very least he is near the border. I am leaving at dawn, whether they are with me or not."

The way he spoke told me beyond all doubt that he was leaving at dawn and there was nothing anyone could do about it.

"You can't leave without at least a full guard and a guide. You haven't been outside the city since you were eleven."

"Ever," Heero clarified. "I was born here."

"All the more reason," I said. "I'll get a guard troupe and a guide ready by dawn. The rest will just have to catch up. In the meantime, get writing. We need to know every little detail to help you find - it's a he, you said?"

"He. Yes. He had the hair of an Amraki priest, but his eyes had the purple taint. He is far away, and dying." As he spoke, he stalked down to the second platform of our commons, where there was a simple writing desk.

"Are you sure he is dying?"

"Why else would he tell me to hurry up? There's no Seerbound that _wants_ to hasten their capture. He knows the date and time of his death. I have until midnight fifteen days from now, and I'm not going to risk his death by not taking him seriously. Go get the troops ready. Then I'll bring my report to the Great Hall. Have everyone there."

I hurried to do so, bounding down the stairs three at a time. I hauled open the trapdoor to the guards' station under our commons, again seeing double as I watched all four of them look up at the door from their card game.

There used to be only two. Then Quatre managed to get past them.

"Heero's got a Seerbound to find. Dash, get to the guardhouse, get everyone who's to be a part of his guard up, dressed, and ready to go. Sol, get Howard to meet us in the Great Hall. Ask him who our Amraki region expert is, then go get them. Tira, alert the stables. John, wake the King, then get Wufei." I barked out orders as all four of us moved out. The first person I met in the hall I sent to guard our rooms in case Quatre decided to pick the locks. Then I went to the Great Hall, to wait.

Howard was the first to arrive. "Are we going to Amraki?" he asked.

"You might. At the very least that's the general direction. What do you know of Amraki?"

Howard shook his head. "Same as most. It's got no political power," the foreign adviser said. "It's not a very important place. Poor, and controlled by the religion. The place is only good for the herbologists trained by the priests. Other than that, it's not worth my knowledge. We have an Amrakien in the castle, Relena, who's loyal to the crown. I sent Sol to get her."

The King rushed in only three seconds later, in his usual huff and puff despite wearing his sleeping robes. "Get who? Do we know where the Seerbound is, and is there any chance they're going to be better than Quatre?"

I shrugged. "We can only hope. Heero said he's an Amrakien priest with the purple taint on his eyes, and that he's in a hurry. He was given a deadline."

King Zechs cocked his head to the side. "A deadline? They can do that?"

"Heero says he has fifteen days to find him, or he'll be dead, your Majesty."

"What was he threatening, suicide? Or is he on death row? Because if he's to be executed, I can call in a favor with Amraki, have them postpone all their executions."

"That would be prudent, I think," I agreed. "Heero hasn't told me all the details, only what I've told you. He's upstairs, writing for the logs. Can we trust this Relena with details?"

"Yes," Howard said. "You might want to ask her to go with you. She knows the land and the lay of the towns. As a guide, she'd be best for that region."

"I don't want to bring any women," Heero snapped as he stalked into the room. "I won't be slowed by the bustle of skirts."

"Amrakien women are more like men than I am," Howard said. "If she slows you down, leave her behind. She'll either catch up or find her own way home."

"Damn right I will," said a female voice, grumpy with sleep. "I'll go, if you want me, but I'll not be treated like one of your court princesses, and if you want to get by in Amraki, you'll need to learn not to treat _them_ like your women here. Else you'll find yourself punched in the face." As an afterthought, she looked at the King, in his robe. "Oh. Your Majesty, it's a pleasure. I didn't realise that was you, you're so much more handsome with your hair uncombed."

King Zechs laughed. "Oh, I like you. She _must_ go along."

And thus it was decided. "I won't be held up for you, or anyone else. I will ride as fast as my horse will take me, and anyone who cannot keep pace will be left behind," Heero said, holding out a handwritten ledger.

"Someone ought to copy this," Relena said, scanning her eyes over it, reading all the details of Heero's dream, down to the colour of the sky and the thickness of the grass.

"I will do that, miss," came the terse voice of Wufei Chang, the King's advisor in all things magic and most things scholarly. He was a young man of only twenty years, with an unmatchable memory. He remembered most of what he read, and everything that was ever said to him. "Tell me about it, Lord Yuy."

"You know it's Heero," Heero snapped. "He's about a head shorter than me. Stunted, by the look of it. Between fifteen and eighteen. Hair down his back, bronze brown. His eyes have the purple taint, and he has Amraki braids."

"Amraki braids can be cut off or undone. We musn't limit ourselves to a priest."

"Agreed," Heero said. "His eye colour suggests southern birth, his hair suggests western upbringing. I noticed the grass was thicker than grass here. We were on a plain."

"Accent?" Wufei queried.

"It changed every time he spoke."

"Was it a lucid dream? Were you in control of your actions?"

"Complete control, with all senses, as if I were actually there."

"And the perception, was any detail blurry? Could you see everything?"

"As clear as if I were there."

Wufei nodded and clenched his jaw. "Were any words spoken?"

"Yes."

"Can you recall the entire conversation, or just bits and pieces?"

Heero proceeded to recant the words spoken, word for word. "And finally, he told me to "Hurry the fuck up", forgive my language, your Majesty, and then I woke up."

"He swore?" Relena asked. "Amrakiens don't swear."

"Ever?" WuFei asked her.

"There are no curse words in Old Amrakien. The language uses metaphors only to express things like that, and if he learned this tongue from an Amrakien, he would have learned a similar creativity. If he swears in this tongue, it means he was probably raised by someone who swore."

"So more south than west."

"I would expect so," Relena said. "The purple taint suggests he was born of the south."

"Then how can we explain his braids? They were the biggest clue. And though I did say not to limit ourselves to a braided priest, I did not say to discount one."

"I agree," Relena said. "This helps us, actually. If all the clues are in place, we'll be looking for an Amrakien priest with the purple taint, who will be conveniently contained for us in an executioner's cell somewhere south of here."

"No premonition of massive importance and clarity ever contains no misleading factors," Heero said, in his own weird little way, as if he were quoting one of Wufei's texts.

To little of my surprise, he was. "Of Seers and Binds, one of Ser Jorah's works," WuFei said. "Good of you to keep up with your reading, Lord Yuy, in these stressful times." He looked pointedly at me as he said it, and I felt a stab of guilt. These times were stressful _because_ I couldn't keep my Bound under control.

"It's Heero," he corrected. "And I don't _sleep_. What else am I to do?"

**Heero**

We left at dawn. Rather, I left at dawn and everyone struggled to catch up with me. The missive we sent to Amraki, asking them to halt their executions, had left hours earlier on the wings of our fastest courier. I didn't expect to catch up with him, as he rode a horse famed for endurance and speed, and I was being held back by my guard and their destriers.

We took advantage of our well rested horses, and we ate on horseback. I demanded we ride well into the night. Without a destination or a waypoint, we rode southwest like madmen, and only stopped late into the night. I was still wide awake when I grudgingly allowed my horse and men to rest, in a rundown inn at a small village. The woman, Relena, immediately rented a room and fell asleep in it, snoring loudly. I found myself in a room, staring at the cobwebbed cieling, trying to will myself to sleep. I needed more clues. I needed to see him again.

As soon as there was sunlight creeping into the room, I rose from the unslept-in bed and began readying myself and my horse.

No one else was awake. l contemplated waking them, then decided not to waste the time. I left a note in my horse's stall on the floor, rebuking them all for being lazy prats, and I galloped out of the town.

Surprisingly, Relena caught up with me first, and alone. She kept her distance, not stressing her horse so long as I was in sight.

After being heartily rebuked for my daring, I was nothing short of ordered to my bed when we camped that night. Tired and sore, off I went. Sleep eluded me, but at this point I was desperate to know if I were going in the right direction or, if in my haste, I had already passed him. So, I rose from my pallet and walked for an hour amongst the sleeping troupe, trying to exhaust myself into collapsing. Instead, I found myself saddling my horse, stuck in some sort of mindless half-sleep. The stallion was looking at me warily, as if to say, "What do you think you are doing at this hour?".

I hauled the tack off him and apologized, verbally and truthfully. It wasn't the first time I had found myself doing my daily rituals in the middle of the night. As pulled the saddle off the poor beasts back, I noted the saddlebag still attached, packed for me by Towa. With the curiosity of one too tired to care, but too awake not to go though the motions, I opened the bag to see what my fellow Seer thought I would be needing.

l was elated at his forethought, for, packed neatly in my bag was a hefty supply of Night's elixir. Enough to have a normal man sleeping deeply every night for a fortnight. Unfortunately, as sleeplessness had never been a new problem for me, I had a tolerance. It would give me sleep for an hour per dose at most, and it would be for nought if my Seerbound were not asleep at the same time. There would be enough for five doses. l divvied out enough to put myself down, and put away the rest, safely wrapped in my bags.

Then I chugged the first of five doses and made my way back to my bed.


	3. Finding Duo part 2

**Heero**

We were in the field again. There he stood, back turned to me again, and even more beautiful, if that were somehow possible. He turned to me, glaring shivs into my spine.

"You're going the wrong way. Did you decide to go sightseeing instead of rescuing me? Or did you presume yourself so fantastic that you could do both in the same timeframe?"

He had the same air of haughty superiority that Quatre did, and it irked me.

"I don't presume anything. Kindly tell me where you are and I'll come get you now, so you can insult me later."

"And spoil all your fun? Ruin your great quest? l think not. "

"What part of this do you think is fun? Because I can't find any."

He stood quietly for a moment, watching me, giving me a moment to watch the sun glinting through his hair. There had to be metal in his braids somewhere, because it reflected into my eyes.

"Perhaps I don't want you to find me. P'raps l like it here."

He said "P'raps". I catalogued that to ask Relena. It might have been a clue.

"You told me you were going to die," I said, trying to keep things civil. "Surely you don't mean to tell me you would rather die than live in the lap of luxury with me."

There, my unnamed Seerbound. Cold hard logic. Luxury equals to greater than death.

"Maybe I don't want to live in your lap," he spat.

"You never have to come anywhere near my lap!" I said in disgust. "There is a line, and it is drawn long before I would force you into my lap."

He raised one of his thin, Amraki eyebrows at me, and I filed their perfectly plucked form into my memory.

"So you expect me to live in the lap of luxury, but not in your lap, and never in anyone else's lap, and I may certainly never have someone else in my lap. If I weren't to die here, I would be running fast and far away from the man who seeks to imprison me in a gilded cage."

"It was a cage for me too," I said, trying to salvage the conversation. "I wanted freedom as well, and they dragged me into it kicking and screaming. But it's not bad. We are there for a good cause. My visions have saved lives. Without you in that cage with me, I can't save anyone."

His perfect little eyebrow did not budge from its position, arched high. Then he smirked and folded his arms over his chest. "I owe noone anything. For all you know, given my freedom, I could be the savior of thousands of lives. But we shall never know. I will die here, or I will die in your gilded cage. I will die alone and I will die wishing for any other death but one of these."

I hung my head and sighed heavily. He was determined to be smug, defiant and morbid all at the same time. Then I raised my head, unable to keep myself from looking at his beautiful visage.

"Just tell me where you are. Please."

"I am in the depths of the ocean," he began, grinning openly. "And yet I am quite precisely in the grave. I am in the floor and in the ceiling. I am sleeping with angels and I am waking with demons."

I stared, just about ready to strangle him now. I began to understand what Trowa said about love and hate being two sides of the same emotion.

"Riddles," I ground out angrily. "You want to give me _riddles_?"

He laughed, and it was beautiful and aggravating. "Mayhaps you deserve my riddles. You are going the wrong way, after all."

I woke up in a cold sweat.

**Heero**

After writing my whole useless dream down for Wufei, we set about plotting a new course, seeing as our current course was apparently "Going sightseeing".

My Seerbound had been completely useless with regards to what was the right direction, however.

We had been going southwest, as the clues from the first dream had pointed south and west. All we now knew was that southwest was incorrect, or he was lying to me in order to keep me from him.

Wufei pointed out to me that it was entirely possible that my Seerbound's "dying" could be a ploy to keep us off his trail and give him time to make a run for it. If he got far enough away, he may be able to beg asylum from another kingdom - and they would give it to him. We would either have to pay a ransom, or they would simply keep him, making us have to attempt to steal him back, all the while with only one functioning Seer.

If we couldn't get him back, we all knew what would happen. I even agreed to it, and would likely do the honors myself.

I would have to die in order for a new Seer to be born. It would be ten long years, at least, before the talent manifested, ten long years with only Trowa to guard the King.

But my Seerbound was likely to walk away from this horrid situation with a pat on the back and a hefty purse. If we didn't find him.

We decided to go west from where we were. It meant we wouldn't stop in any towns for supplies, and that we would be encumbered by horrible terrain, but there was one deciding factor.

Relena thought he was actually Amrakien/Torren. Torren was a province to the north, where there were Amrakien influences, but it had been overtaken by the Cathol faith. Why did Relena think he was Torren? One word.

P'raps.

One little five letter word had her completely convinced of it.

So rather than completely change direction and head north, we went west. If we were wrong, we would at least be heading in one of the possible right directions.

I slept two nights consecutively, probably through exhaustion, but to clarify, sleeping the night means "I slept for roughly fifteen minutes every two hours, being woken every time I heard anything louder than wind". I did not dream of him on those nights, which meant he was likely sleeping during the day, and avoiding the likelihood of us seeing one another. Either he just hated me or he did not want the dreams to give up his position.

On the third night, I drank another vial, and slept for four consecutive hours. I did not see him.

On the fourth night, everyone began to get upset about having no clarification as to the correctness of our direction. So I opted instead to have the vial in the early morning, to see if I might catch him just as he fell asleep.

No such luck.

The fifth night passed with still no dreams, and when the sixth night came, Wufei gruffly told everyone to ride through the night and morning, and hopefully exhaust me into sleeping the next day at midday. I did, for two hours straight, and dreamt nothing.

Then I had another vial at mid-afternoon, and dreamt nothing again.

At dusk, Wufei and I agreed that we couldn't move if we didn't know we were going in the right direction. We had gone too far blindly. And so, shortly before the sun set, I took another vial and prayed.

**Heero**

"You're supposed to love me," he said to me, when I opened my eyes. I wondered how exactly he was always aware before I was, as it was usually the other way around, Wufei had told me. I was used to premonitions, I should be able to gather my wits faster than him.

He was in my face, mere inches apart, but there was no heat in it, no romance. It was a challenge, a defiance, and the air between us was as cold as ice.

"And yet here we are. You don't even _like_ me. You make all this fuss about finding me, and yet still you ride off in the wrong direction. You're even further away than you were before! You must actually hate me."

"No!" I said forcefully. "I do not! _You _wouldn't even tell me where to go!"

"Like you should need it, mister fortune-teller! Go back to your tower and leave me to die in peace."

"I won't. I'm coming for you, and nothing you can say will stop it."

He eyed me carefully, leaning back out of his challenge.

"Fine," he said. "Then maybe I shouldn't say a thing."

"No!" I protested. If anything could make this worse, it was that.

He turned his face away from me carefully, glaring at me out of the corner of one eye. "Alright then," he said, smug. "Lord knows I couldn't hold my tongue if I tried. But I'm certain there's something I could say to stop you."

"Nothing," I said.

He narrowed his eyes, turned back to me and returned to his challenging position, right up close.

"I. Hate. You."

The words stung, but not as much as they could have. I was well prepared for them, I knew they would come. Quatre said it all the time to Trowa. But when I heard them given to me, I couldn't help but feel a bitter pang of anger toward Quatre. How could he _do_ that to Trowa so flippantly? It _hurt_.

When I woke up, I had to question how _he_ had the power to begin and end the dreams and I didn't.


	4. Finding Duo part 3

And finally, some good ol' Zero-mode Quatre. Even as I was writing it, I was thinking to myself, holy shit this is wrong.

**Heero**

WuFei lost his calm when I told him the bad news about our direction. He spent the next hour trying to find it while the rest of us tried to figure out what to do now.

If he was telling the truth (and that was a very large if), then Relena's theory about him being part Torren was disproved. However, he had used the word "Lord", which proved he was not Amrakien, as they worshipped a goddess. So the only place that was definitely _not_ the right place was Amraki - which was where we had been heading. He had also said we had gotten further away than the last time, which meant we now had to double back. But where? We were going in the wrong direction now, and had been before. If he was telling the truth, that meant he was either in the south, or the south-east, or somewhere else entirely. All we knew was that west and southwest were wrong

We now had only six days left before his deadline. Word had reached us that the King had put a halt to all death sentances within his reach until further notice, but no one was convinced that would save him.

If he was lying, then Relena's theory about him being Torren was almost a given. He had said Lord and P'raps, and he'd goaded us into thinking we should go far away from Torren.

So all we really knew was that Amraki was wrong, Torren was likely right if he was lying, and if he was telling the truth, we needed to be southeast in Psysche, east in Tyrell, or Northeast in Kaster.

We had a whole Kingdom to scour and only one province ruled out. And that province was the smallest of them all. If it had been Amraki, we probably could have scoured the entire place in about three days. It had been nine days and we had ruled out less than a single percent of the Kingdom.

Everyone decided to go north from where we were, straight into Torren. It would only take us about two days to reach it, leaving us four days to find him, and it was incredibly likely that he was lying. It was statistically impossible that he was telling the truth.

My head told me that he was definitely lying, but my gut told me he wasn't. I had never had that before, as I was so used to knowing the answer before it was told, suspense was lost on me. Gut feelings were moot when one could see the future. Upon actually sitting down and considering what would happen if my gut was right, and he was telling the truth, I knew that going to Torren made no logical sense.

If we went to Torren, and he was southeast in Psysche, then he was going to die in six days, while we looked for him in Torren.

If we went to Psysche, and he was in Torren, then he was lying about where he was, and likely lying about his death as well, which would give him plenty of time to head further north into King Noin's territory. If he asked the King for sanctuary, it would be given, but he surely would be traded back to us if King Milliardo agreed to marry his daughter, Lucrezia Noin, which he would, as he was already seriously considering that agreement, and a Seerbound was worth far more than any trade agreement, including marriage.

So, thinking ahead, as I tried to predict the future the way a normal person would, something I had rarely ever done before, I decided that we had to take the chance that he wasn't lying. The common people didn't know that we were friendlier now with the Noins than ever before, so surely that would be where he would run to.

I explained my reasoning to everyone, and followed by insisting that we go toward the southern province of Psysche. Some nodded their heads understandingly. Wufei adamantly resisted, but I shook my head at him, warning what would happen if I didn't get my way.

My insomnia would more than make it easy for me to delay dreams. I would be happy to do that, as my SeerBound wanted it, and I did actually love him enough to want for him his desires. Atop that, if we actually got him, and I got my prescience and premonitions back, all I'd have to do would be twist a few words, not tell a few dreams, and people would die. Given the right dream, I could kill the King through simple neglect.

He grudgingly accepted, and we set off, south-south-east, toward Psysche. We had the added bonus that we could travel on a well-travelled road - the Grand Way, a flat road usually used for inter-province trade that ran a full circle through each of the provinces.

On the second night, as I drank the last vial, I prayed that I was right, and he wasn't in Torren, about to die.

**Trowa**

I had spent the last six hours in a Seer's trance, having no premonitions. I used to be so good at the trance, but Quatre messed that up for me.

The trance is the opposite of meditation, where one lets his mind wander aimlessly with no real thoughts of substance, just pure relaxation and peace. During a Seer's trance, the Seer takes on a state of extreme concentration, thinking so hard about something, in order to incite a premonition. It is an exhausting process.

I had just gotten into bed, at three in the morning, and fallen asleep when Quatre woke me up in the middle of the night with an odd question.

"Something's ... different. What is it?"

I rolled over, peering at his still form, shackled in his cot. He refused to sleep with me, but I'd be damned if I'd ever let him take my bed.

"What do you mean?" I asked, wary. Innocent conversations with Quatre _always_ turned into arguments.

"I don't know," he said. I heard him shifting. "I feel like something's different from usual. It's quieter. You're not yelling as often. I'm getting away with things I don't normally. Did somebody die? Really, I'm curious."

I sighed. "I don't know," I said. "Nothing's changed since Heero left."

There was silence for a moment. "Wait ... Yuy's gone?" he asked.

I laughed. "You're hopeless, you know that? _Hopeless_."

"I didn't know Seers could leave."

I shook my head in mock dismay. "He's been gone for over a week, Quatre," I said, rolling my eyes. "He's gone to find his Seerbound."

I knew Quatre well enough to know that that word had made him tense up completely. He hated any reminder of what he was.

"I didn't notice he was gone," Quatre said, after a moment of tense silence. "Oh well. What does this mean for me?"

"Nothing," I said. Always 'me' with Quatre. 'Me, me, me'. "He's gone to find him. Then he'll come back. We'll have a new roommate." I could almost hear cogs turning in Quatre's head.

"So I've been getting away with things because Yuy's gone. That doesn't make any sense."

"If you're referring to the incident with that makeshift shiv, you haven't gotten away with that. You're still on bread and water."

"I'm referring to my general unruliness," Quatre said. "Dickwad," he said, as if to clarify.

I sighed.

"Normally, you would've hit me right there," Quatre said. "Have you grown a thicker skin, or are you claiming Yuy's absence somehow affected this?"

"Heero hasn't been here to do his _job_," I explained. "I'm having to be at the King's side, from the moment he leaves his chambers, to the moment he gets back, _and_ I have to be attempting to incite prophecies in between. _You_ are getting away with insulting me because I don't have the energy or the time to spend rebuking you."

Quatre's quiet, slow breathing gave nothing away as to his mood, but I knew he was thinking. And probably plotting.

"If you can help me, just this once, while Heero is gone, I promise there will be something good in it for you when Heero comes back," I offered. "Think about it. What do you want?"

Quatre snorted. "Are you bribing me?"

"Yes," I said without hesitation. "What do you want?"

"I want to go home to my father and never see you again," he said calmly.

"You can't have that."

"Then I don't think you have anything to offer me," he said.

I sighed again.

"I could let him come visit," I offered. It was the first time I had ever offered that.

I had found Quatre locked up in his father's basement. It was his room. He had lived there. He had a big four poster bed, carpets, books - rows upon rows of books - but nothing distracted from the fact that Quatre had been living in his father's basement. His door was locked from the outside. His bed, though large and clearly comfortable, had been fitted with shackles.

I knew his father was a monster. An evil person. Quatre's completely manic personality was probably just the natural outcome of whatever had been going on in that basement. Alas, there was no proof of anything. The Winners were influential, it was their greatest trait, and nobody had any proof that Quatre had ever been poorly treated - aside from the fact that he had lived in a locked basement. And Quatre refused to speak poorly of his father.

Quatre snorted. "So he can see me like this?" he scoffed. "Trussed up at your service like some harlot? I think not."

I almost felt glad Quatre didn't want to see him. I shuddered at the thought.

There was a few minutes peace, where I started drifting to sleep, wondering what had happened. If all our conversations were this pleasant, I'd probably stop hating him.

"So what you're saying to me," Quatre said suddenly, startling me awake. "Is that until Yuy comes back, you're going to be gone from dawn till dusk, I'm going to be all alone up here, and when you get back you're going to be too exhausted to pay attention to me?"

It sounded so horrible when he put it that way, but he had omitted all context. "Quatre, it's been that way for _more than a week _and you hadn't even noticed."

"I've noticed _now_," Quatre said. "Here's an idea, how about we play chess?"

"Quatre, I have to be awake in two hours."

"You don't want to play chess with me. I give you a friendly gesture - "

"Oh, for God's sake - "

"And you throw it back in my face! Really, it's no wonder we don't get along. You're clearly not interested in my friendly gestures."

"Quatre," I warned.

"Clearly," he drawled, venom seeping into his voice.

"Let's play chess," I agreed, getting up out of bed.

"Don't sound so excited about it," he said sarcastically.

I ignored him and fetched the chessboard, resting it on my desk. I went to his cot and wordlessly untied him, none too gently. I knew what he was doing. I was only going along with it to avoid an argument as long as possible.

He didn't comment, his eyes looking at my face, calculating. He got up, went to the board and sat, smiling at me with a pristine, fake smile. The same smile a psychotic wife gives her husband just before she poisons his meal.

I set up the pieces and we played. I _hate_ chess. I always lose, especially to Quatre, who is a cold-blooded tactical psychopath. That isn't why I hated chess, though - I hated chess because I used to be good at it, when I didn't need Quatre to See. Back then, chess was an excersize in mini-trances - just think hard enough about what your opponent will do, and soon enough, you can watch the whole game play out in front of your eyes.

Now I did not have such a luxury. Quatre thrashed me. He smiled at me again, as I sat there, nearly asleep. "Checkmate," he said, smirking. "Best of three," he then demanded in a deadpan and began resetting the board.

He killed me in the second match, then demanded we play out the third, even though he had already won best of three. "It's just good sportsmanship," he said. "You wouldn't want me to think you were a bad sport, would you?"

I can't recall when I fell asleep, just that I did. Stress, loneliness and the hope that Quatre actually wanted to give me a friendly gesture had lulled me into allowing myself into a situation where I was asleep and he wasn't tied up. I had learned long ago that this was a bad place to be.

I recall hearing a soothing, soft voice - presumably him as he tried to keep me asleep - and my head being lifted up off the chessboard. I recall the vague notion of wanting a pillow placed under my head before fingers grasped my hair uncomfortably tightly and my head was smacked back down into the desk, hard.

Reeling from it, he got me back up and back down into the desk once more before the adrenaline hit and I elbowed him in the stomach, sending him sprawling back. He took advantage of the blood in my eye and sprang back at me, a fist in my other eye and a heel crashing into my foot.

I started to fall over, caught myself, then secondguessed it and allowed myself to just fall on top of him, sending us both crashing onto the floor. He flailed at me, a seething ball of rage now, all fingernails and knuckles and teeth. I pinned him down, and managed to get a grip on his throat, denying him air until he calmed down.

When he did, I loosened my grip. He smirked. "Go on," he said. "Do it."

He alluded to my very, very powerful desire to just strangle him to death and be done with it. Instead, I took it as permission to begin his punishment.

I backhanded him, hard, across the cheek. His head snapped to the side and he spat onto the floor, then turned back to face me.

"Weak," he taunted.

I didn't know what else to do.

He was already on basic rations. He had been on bread and water only for a week already. He taunted me when I hit him. I'd had him whipped once. He laughed as if it tickled. I'd tried confinement. He seemed to like it. I'd put him into my closet once and shut the door, then left him there overnight. He hated that, then he adapted, went in there willingly behind my back until he was used to it, and learned to like it. I'd put him on a diet of nothing but spinach. He learned to like that too. I'd hit him, he'd taunt me until I overdid it, then he'd make me out to be a horrible person for over-punishing him. He wasn't allowed anything to do unless I gave it. He had no books, no access to any of mine, no toys, no people to talk to.

I'd tried the carrot. I'd tried showing him how nice I could be. I'd tried for months, using just strong words and ultra-mild punishments. Always starting each day with a fresh slate. It just didn't work. Nothing ever worked. The truth of the matter was that it wasn't me - it was Quatre. He was a psychopath.

So I gripped his throat again, cut off air and blood, leaned in and tried something new.

He choked in my hands, my lips on his, and I bit his lip, without care of how unpleasant a kiss it had to be. I leaned back. "You listen to me," I said. "You hate me, I hate you. But I am going to get through these next few weeks, with or without your co-operation. Next time you pull a stunt like that, I will tie you to my bed and my tongue will go down your throat. And I _know_ you won't like that."

I released his neck and sat back, putting a hand on my aching head.

He panted and coughed, staring up at the ceiling.

"Huh," he said eventually. "So you _do_ have balls. You had me going with that girly voice of yours."

**A/N: **For any who are wondering, this ^^ is precisely how all Bind's have acted, since ... forever. This is what Heero's been bracing for his whole life.

Sucks to be a Seer, huh?


	5. Finding Duo part 4

Hopefully this chapter will answer some questions. And raise others. Muahahahaha.

**Of Seers And Binds**

**The Collective Works of Ser Jorah Mer, First Seer to King Leonaar III**

Binds are always different. No two of the seething, hateful creatures are ever the same demon. It is unclear to us what causes the Binds to decay into what they are, but it is impossible to class any bind as 'human'.

We love them, surely so, and deeper than any normal love, but that does not change what they are. Seers, if they know what they are, usually volunteer themselves into service, either out of loyalty to King and country or from a desire to achieve the luxury of a Lord's title. Binds will not. It can be argued that being a Bind is more pleasant than being a Seer - all the luxury and none of the responsibility. It is an odd position.

Everyone hopes their child to be a Seer, for riches and glories. No one wants their child to be a Bind - not because they will be taken away, but because of what happens to the Bind. They do not maintain themselves. Seers are people. Binds devolve into something else.

Very few Binds ever accept their true position. All Binds insist that their Seer has got the wrong person, that they aren't it, despite the clear return of the ability to See upon acquisition of the Bind. Binds always refuse to admit they had the dreams - probably because the dreams are sure proof that the Seer go the right person. The Bind is always lying about this, and can usually be proven liars. They will slip up and show that they remember something that happened in the dreams. Sometimes, if a Bind wants something badly enough, they will even admit to it, but this is extraordinarily rare, and never happens in the usual circumstances.

Binds refuse to see reason when it comes to their Seer. Binds will never love their Seer. Binds will use any weakness to their advantage. Binds are always violent. Binds never accept their Seer's love, and will deny it even exists at every turn.

There is always a period at the beginning, when a Bind is first captured. I have called it "The Bliss Time".

Not to be confused with a pleasant time, the Bliss Time is where the Bind and Seer first come to know each other, outside of the dreams. It takes the Bind's maniacal nature some time to manifest, though they always struggle initially, they are not mad, nor do they truly wish anyone any harm. They are usual, typical people whose first instinct to being captured is to fight it. During this time of Bliss, it is possible for a Bind to be reasoned with or talked to. They often ask about their families and respond well to visitation. I highly recommend taking full advantage of this, and use anything they desire as bait to push them into good behaviour. I have called it Bliss, because although it is certainly not a good time, it is the time where the Bind is most similar to what they were before capture, and the least infected by the Bind. Though they will struggle and will not submit or love, this time is bliss by comparison to what is to come.

After Bliss, which never lasts, the Bind will lose interest in anything he once valued. Family, friends, hobbies are no exception. The Seer will no longer have anything in which to use as a reward, and be forced to use punishment only. The Bind will grow a thick skin to punishment unnaturally quickly - proof that magic is at work - and punishments will cease to ensure obedience.

The best result, though certainly not the best method, I have ever seen at this stage was Lord Govrah's solution. When punishment ceased to be effective, Govrah would lock his Bind in a small dark room for weeks on end. Unable to do much in such a situation, his Bind would simply lie there in wait, after some minor tantrums. When Govrah believed he needed a time of good Sight, he would remove the Bind from the room and act, in my opinion, viciously abusive. Rape, humiliation, beatings, and constant trauma would be inflicted, until the Bind would submit. Govrah believed he achieved this submission wholly because the Bind didn't want the abuse to kill her. Brought to the brink of death, the Bind would submit temporarily, and Govrah would achieve some premonitions. Once the Bind recovered, she would start fighting again, and Govrah would lock her back up in the dark room until she was healed enough to begin again.

Though this method gave Lord Govrah impressive results, making his Sight better during the abuse than it had been before he took a Bind, it is very rarely practiced, due to the strain on the Seer himself. Most Seers cannot handle the thought of doing this. I myself find it repulsive.

Govrah managed to do this only four times to his Bind, before his body gave up on him. In his journals, he states that the guilt had eaten him alive. He demanded that his Bind be set free after his death, and given a hefty sum from Govrah's own allowance. Study estimates it to be every single coin he had been given since he began being abusive. He wrote her an apology, in which he damned himself to the deepest levels of hell, and would stay there voluntarily unless she deemed it otherwise, and he never expected her to do so.

The Bind, in a confusing and unexpected turn, visited Govrah's tomb every day for seventeen years, often refusing to move from that spot. She has been referred to in many old wive's tales as "The White Widow" as she would wear a white gown, and stand by his grave, sobbing like a lost lover. One day she was found dead, looking like she was simply sleeping, atop his tomb, with a love letter to him in her hands, wherein she stated she didn't know why she had behaved so poorly, that she loved him dearly and would be with him in the afterlife as his dutiful and loving Seerbound.

We do not know why they hate us, but from the above and similar tales of Binds that outlive their Seers, we know that they seem to regret it afterward. It could be argued that this is due to the trauma of the situation, in the way a child will love and protect an abusive parent.

I refuse to believe it. I find comfort in the idea that my Bind is capable of love, even if it only happens after my death. Should she ever read any of my books, she will see they are all dedicated in her name. If I can ever get her to learn to read. She wanted to, at first, but lost interest after we left Bliss.

I miss her.

**Heero**

"So, you've turned around, I see."

Again, he was aware before me.

"How do you always know where we are?" I asked him. "And I fought for you. Everyone else says you're lying and baiting us in the wrong direction."

"P'raps I am," he laughed. It was glorious. I tried to hold on to the sound for as long as I could, hoping I'd hear it again in better circumstances. "Regardless, you're closer now than ever before. If you keep going at this pace, you might even get here in time to transfer my fate from death here to death in your arms. Wouldn't that be wonderful?" His sarcasm was like ice.

I shuddered at the thought. "Are you going to die alone?" I asked, dreading the answer, but needing to ask it. A plan had formed in my mind.

"Yes," he said bitterly.

"Wouldn't it be better if you died in my arms then?"

He cocked his head to the side, actually considering it for a moment. "Actually," he said, peering at me, thinking. "I think it might. Of my few options, death with you is better than death alone, and both are better than life with you."

I nodded my head. He wasn't opposed to me, not me exactly, he was opposed being caged for the rest of his life. I was just someone to get angry at.

"Then it's settled," I said, moving toward him, to place a tentative touch on his hand.

"What's settled?" he asked sharply.

"I don't want to force this on you," I said, putting truth in the air before I started lying. "I'll tell my troupe that we're going to reach you at this pace. We'll get there just in time for me to keep you company while you die. I want you to be happy, and that seems like the only way to get it."

He turned to me, eyes wide suddenly.

He'd fallen for it.

"You would do that for me?" he asked, sincerely.

I knew this betrayal would forever sever any hope of a civil relationship between us, even though he would never admit to remembering it, but I had to do it.

"I don't pretend to like it, but yes, I would," I said.

He slowly crept toward me, until we were so close we were touching, and then put his head on my shoulder.

"Okay," he said quietly.

I let out a breath of air, both glad and upset that I'd hooked him. Now to reel him in.

"You know, I'm going to have to die too," I said quietly.

"I know," he said, and I could hear the slightest touch of remorse.

"I love you, though," I said, and I did it deliberately, to push more truth in to further conceal the trap. "It's alright, because I love you."

He was quiet, and I pulled my arms up around his shoulders, holding him against me, hoping it wouldn't be the last time.

"I'd like us to be buried together," I said. "Somewhere near the sea. Would you like that?"

"No," he said. "I want to be cremated."

"That's alright," I said.

"We can spread the ashes near the sea if you'd like," he said.

I was so pleased that he'd offered me a compromise that I barely even noticed the success of my trap.

"That's just as good," I said. The truth was that I really didn't care what was done with me when I was dead, I was much more concerned about what was done with me while I was alive. "You've never told me your name," I said quietly, voicing something that had irked me the whole time. "We've always gone straight into an argument."

"I don't like my name," he said. "No one nice ever calls me by my name anymore."

"Please?" I asked.

"Someone I used to know called me Little One. That might ... calm me, while I'm dying," he said quietly.

"Little One?" I repeated the pet name. "It sounds like they loved you."

"Surprising, isn't it?" he said sombrely.

"Not even slightly," I said.

"I need to go now," he whispered.

"Why?" I demanded, holding him by the upper arms, as if holding him tightly could keep the dream together.

"I ... I'm passing out," he said quietly. "I'm sorry. I actually want to stay this time."

And then I was awake.

**Next Chapter**, more on Heero's trap and the end of part 1, Finding Duo.


	6. Finding Duo part 5

**A/N: **There has been a review saying contradictory information about Binds is in previous chapters. I'd like to ask if anyone else has been spotting anything weird - I've looked over everything, and can't see anything that I thought could confuse, but then again I'm in the writer's chair, not the readers. For clarification, what the reader is supposed to now know about Binds is:

A Seer's ability to have premonitions is directly correlated to the Bind's ability to submit. Bind's _cannot_ submit fully or love their Seer, due to unknown magical reasons, and it has been this way for a long, long time. However, even with the most unruly of people, you _can _beat them down a bit. A slave that hits you in the face once a week is much more submissive than one that does once a day. This is why Trowa has been such an ass to Quatre. Seers have a very big job, one which directly influences the wellbeing of the entire Kingdom, thus the necessity to keep the Binds as under control as much as possible.

I had intended to make it clear how much of a nutcake Quatre is. Also, Trowa is supposed to be coming off as deranged and off the rails. Everything to do with him and Quatre is messed up and horrid, and this has been going on for years now. Though this story hasn't even touched on that subject yet. We will be leaving those two alone for a little bit, however.

**Heero**

Wufei actually applauded me when he read my transcript of the dream. "You, sir, are a devious bastard. How did you know Psysche has those beliefs about corpses?"

Psyche did in fact have some interesting beliefs. In towns near the sea, men must be cremated, and their ashes spread over the sea, in order for their spirits to cause torrential waters to the sea raiders from the far south. They had to be cremated so that the ashes would mix in with the water, rather than just their bodies washing up ashore.

Inland, they had to be buried, so that their power and strength would feed the crops, and their hands nurture and plow the soil.

Of course, all this was complete crap, and everyone knew it, but it was an old tradition that the towns all followed still, mostly due to the fact that everyone's parents had been disposed of that way.

The reason it was so important was that it told me exactly where my "Little One" was. He was in our current trajectory, at our current speed. On the day before the fifteenth day, Little One's expiration date, we would pass through two towns. One was inland, one at the shore.

Little One was at the farther one, by the coast. Furthermore, the fact that he wanted to be burned after death removed the possibility that he was from any province other than shore towns in Psysche, or anywhere in Amraki, as everywhere else preferred burials. Amraki had been disproven, leaving the two towns in our path, and the farthest was a shore town.

Rather than lie to the troupe, I told them the truth. We sped up rather than keep pace. I had no more vials, so I didn't bother attempting to dream again. He seemed to be able to draw upon the magic of the dreams - at least, that's what I had theorized - in order to find out where we were and what direction we were headed. If I dreamed again, he would know we were going to get there early.

On the fourteenth morning, we arrived at the first of the two towns, the inland one, called Krackensie. We had made extroadinary time. WuFei suggested that we search the town, just in case Little One was from the shore town but had migrated for some reason, and we would have time to search both, as they were only a day apart. So, everyone went their separate ways, we used the power bestowed upon us by the King and got entry to every house and shed in town. As expected, he wasn't there, and no one in town recalled seeing him, which meant he was definitely in the seaside town. It only took us half the day to get through it, it wasn't a large place.

Late the next morning we reached the shore side town. We were a day early. His last hour was expected to be three the next morning.

We searched the town.

Then we searched it again.

No one in town had any idea who he was, and _none_ of them seemed to be lying. It was exactly the same scenario as the last town.

I was about to fall into a blind rage, when instead, the worst part about insomnia hit me. I don't sleep nearly as much as I should, but the worst part was that once my body hit its threshold, and it well and truly had what with the stress of the last two weeks, I would fall asleep, and be unable to resist it.

I am told that I actually collapsed mid-conversation with someone in the street.

**Heero**

"You said you loved me!" Little one screeched at me, flailing his fists at my chest. "You said you were coming for me! You bastard, monkey's bowel, hole of a whore! I changed my mind for you!" He was a mess, crying and angry and completely out of control.

Exhausted, I managed to grab his wrists and stop him, but only barely. I had the weirdest sensation of not remembering how I fell asleep. "Stop," I said, and as he continued to struggle, I said again more forcefully, "Stop!"

It made him stop, but only as he cried more. "You lied to me! I heard you! I heard footsteps above me, I know you were here! You walked right over me, a day earlier than you promised, and I changed my mind. I heard you and I thought maybe it would be okay to stay alive with you but now you've gone to see the ocean, and you aren't even going to be with me while I die! You're a horrible person!"

"Walked over you?" I said incredulously. "You're underground?"

"You didn't get that when I told you I was 'Under the floor and in the grave'?" he said equally incredulously. "You're a moron!"

"_Where are you?!_" I yelled, using my larger frame to try and force the words out of him.

Instead, I seemed to simply frighten him into passing out again, as I woke up a moment later, the connection severed.

**Heero**

I didn't transcribe that dream immediately after waking up. Instead, I got up from the ground, where several people were gathered about fawning over me.

"He's in Krackensie. We missed him," I said simply, and got my bearings, trying to remember where I'd left my horse.

Eventually I did, and went immediately to him, still saddled and ready to go. We were off back the way we'd come in moments.

We had to stop midway there, in the dead of night, to let the horses walk for a while, as they were very near breaking point now. I told them all the problem, that we'd "walked right over him", and had everyone, including myself, try to think of where we could have done that.

No one could. Eventually we concluded that judging from the riddle he had given me, some evil monster had buried him alive. He didn't have much time left if that was the case.

Shortly before we were about to gallop the horses again, Wufei came to me, and he was so demure that it startled me.

"I didn't realise it before, my lord," he said quietly, fumbling with his tunic hem, "but, one of the houses I searched, the man who owned it was dead in his bed. He was a drunkard, everyone knew it, and there was wine next to him and everything, so it seemed normal at the time - "

"And now it doesn't?" I pressed.

"Thinking back now," Wufei said, "I don't remember seeing any alcohol stored anywhere. A drunk must have his drink, surely? I think he must have had it hidden somewhere, which means ... I missed a spot, my lord, please forgive me."

We reached the town just as midnight fell, where Wufei wordlessly took the lead, going straight toward the drunk's house. We all followed, as the only other option was to begin digging and hope we found him.

The whole town woke up from the clatter of horse hooves on cobblestones, and I was glad they did, because we were uncomfortably close to the deadline, if not passed it already.

We reached his door and Wufei attempted to force it open, having no time to ask the magistrate for the key. He was too small, and I was too weak from lack of sleep to help. Once one of the men caught up, he simply barrelled into it and broke the latch, then was straight inside looking for hidden Little One.

Those of us that could fit filed inside, searching. "Search the floor," I said.

Everyone did. The man that had opened the door began lifting furniture up to see if there was anything under it.

Another of my men found the trap-door, hidden in the wooden slats in the kitchen. It was very deceptive, and made in such a way that no slats were cut, so it didn't stand out. "Here!" he called, and we all filed in, while he dug his fingers into the wood. "Me ma has one of these, it hides the good cellar with the good wine."

He eventually found some sort of notch and lifted several slats up, simply off the ground, revealing a small ladder and a very dark cellar.

I was first into the dark, calling out, "Little One?"

And then Wufei handed me the torch, and I saw him.


	7. Primary Mission: Maintain Peace

**Heero**

All I could see of him was his hair and two fingers.

He was huddled under an old but thick blanket, all underneath it from head to toe. Some of his hair poked out under it in misshapen angles, and the two fingers were lax out the top of the blanket. They looked like he had been clutching at it, but now they were still, and as I rushed closer, I saw they were deathly pale and tinged blue.

It was freezing in the cellar, the perfect temperature for wine. At least a hundred bottles of red wine lay perfectly still in their racks, and my little one lay equally still.

I feared it too late as I rushed to him, peeling the blanket from his head, to no reaction. His lips were blue.

There was a flurry of action, as Wufei yanked the torch from me. "Gather him up," he hissed. "He's frozen."

Numbly, I did, not really aware of what to do with myself. I lifted him off the floor and across my lap, holding his head in the crook of my elbow. Wufei thrust the torch to one of the men and began fixing the blanket around him.

I touched my hand to his face, not sure if he were even breathing, as the torchlight played with shadows across his face.

He looked nothing at all like the dream. He was not a sun-kissed demigod with chestnut hair and perfect proportions. He was not beautiful. He was not lovely, or fair, or even half the picture I had become accustomed to. I wasn't even certain it was the right person, until the torch came closer again and his eyes fluttered open.

They were much more purple than the dream had shown. They were even more beautiful now. He drew me in with his eyes, bringing me closer, until our noses touched and I just stared at him. His eyes showed exhaustion, a little bit of confusion, and I seriously doubted he was completely lucid, but none of that mattered.

His face, which had been lax, softened, and he simply looked at me. All I could see in his eyes was pure love.

I didn't know what was happening. I thought for a moment that perhaps I wasn't lucid either, but it stayed there, and he stared at me, lovingly, kindly, as if he was more happy to see me than anything else in the world.

Wufei handed me his water canteen and I realised he had been talking to me. "He's parched, Heero, look at him." I took it numbly, trying to wrap my exhausted mind around things, and when I looked back to Little One, I realised he hadn't looked away from me. His face had fallen, his expression crestfallen, tears forming in his eyes. One of his hands was attempting to tug at my shirt.

I pushed my attention back onto him, vowing not to stray again, and brought the water to his lips.

This was a test, I knew it. If he couldn't drink, he was done for, we were too late.

He didn't seem to understand at first, not breaking his gaze with me. I stared at him, holding his eyes, as I poured a little water out onto his lips.

His first reaction was to fight it. He moved his head away, letting out a feeble moan of protest.

I held his head closer to my chest, keeping him still, using the mouthpiece of the bottle to edge his lips apart and get some water in. After a moment, he stopped, blinked a few times, then the hand in my shirt grabbed firmly and he drank. Guzzled would be more appropriate. After a minute he seemed to accidentally inhale it, and began coughing it up. After that I restricted the speed I let him have it, but he just resumed staring at me, and drinking.

Sometimes he would hold the water in his mouth for a while without swallowing, closing his lips, and swishing it around, as if it were some fine treat, but he would always eventually swallow it and wrap his lips around the canteen for more.

All the while Wufei was looking him over, peeling the blanket off him to check him over. I wasn't looking, too scared to leave his gaze in case it brought on another tear in his eye. Plus, he looked at me with unadulterated adoration. I couldn't understand it, I couldn't place it. Why?

"We have to move him, Heero," Wufei said. "He's sick, real sick, if we knock him we might break something. But he has to get out of this cold. It's a damn cellar, he's freezing to death."

I nodded, not breaking eye contact. "Okay," I said. "How do we get him up the ladder?"

Wufei huffed, and I imagined him grimacing, but I would not tear my eyes away to look at him.

"You stay down here with him, and push him up. I'll take him and sit him on the landing. Try to keep looking at him, it's keeping him centred. We need him awake till we can put some food in him."

I nodded, realising that I was keeping him centred. His eyelids were fluttering open and closed, but always back to look at me, with that expression of love in them.

I reached under the blanket for the hand that was near my shirt. I found it, but not before my hand found his chest, which was so thin that it made me draw back. His hand was equally thin, and I found I could not hold it as I wanted to, because the tighter I held, the more I felt it seem to give way.

I feared I might shatter his fingers.

I carefully brought his hand up to my neck, holding it there against the warmth of my pulse. His fingers curled against my throat.

Wufei took the blanket off him and threw it up onto the floor above, then went up himself. "Come on, Yuy," he pressed.

Trying to maintain our eye contact, I put his hand back down and hooked my arm under his knees. During this, I made the mistake of glancing away from his eyes, and saw what Wufei had already seen.

My Little One was, actually, little. He was not as tall as he had been in my dreams, and he was skin and bones, quite literally. He was completely naked, except for a collar around his neck, and I had the presence of mind to put two and two together as to why a man would keep a naked slave in his cellar. I wished I hadn't.

I pushed my gaze back to his eyes, and lifted him up. He was more awkward to lift than heavy, as he was all twig limbs and limp neck. The man with the torch grabbed his head just before it would fall, and he was about to push it into my neck.

"Don't," I said, "He needs to look at me."

And so we awkwardly shuffled over to the ladder, where Wufei waited. I braced Little One against the ladder and got a grip around his armpits, while Wufei lightly gripped his hair to keep his neck from falling.

He barely moved throughout the whole thing, as I lifted him up above me, still staring, and he watched idly. His only move was to reach out to me feebly with a hand when Wufei moved his grip around his chest and hauled him up.

I heard him give out a strained cry, one that sounded like despair incarnate, as our eye contact was broken, the spell upon us both gone in a flash. I vaulted up the ladder after him, and when I got to him, I took his face in both my hands and tried to recast it, to get his eyes on me again, but he had closed them, turning his face aside into my palm, tears beginning to fall.

"Get him to the sitting room," Wufei said, handing him over to me, and I pushed his face into my neck this time as I lifted him and left the kitchen.

One of the men was soaking his rations in water, softening them, another nurturing a new fire in the dead drunk's fireplace. I sat down with Little One on my lap again, holding him close, as Wufei took his cloak off and lay it over his naked body.

All of the men had the common decency to avert their eyes, and had they not, they wouldn't have seen anything good anyway. He was in absolute abysmal form, but I tried not to look, instead trying to get him to open his eyes again. I needed him to look at me, to love me, to centre me, and I needed him to have all those things as well.

Someone found a blanket, and had that over him as well, over Wufei's already warm coat. I knew we couldn't stay in this house for long. We needed to get him warmed up and out before he was lucid, as this had clearly been his prison for some time.

None of the townsfolk had known him. They hadn't been lying.

A woman knocked on the doorframe of the entryway, tearing my eyes from Little One. "Oh, good lord, it's ... here? I thought he was supposed to be in Garth?"

"What is it, ma'am?" Wufei asked tersely.

"Oh," she said. "So sorry. Mama at the inn started preparing a room for you, when we heard the horses. I just came to tell you. I'll run and tell her to put on some broth."

She turned and fled as swiftly as she came, and I was grateful, but Little One still wouldn't open his eyes for me. I begged and pleaded with him quietly, trying not to frighten him, as he had begun sobbing and his breath came in heaves.

Someone handed me Wufei's canteen again and I brought it to his lips.

The exact same process as the last time happened. As soon as he felt the rim of the bottle at his lips he turned away and began struggling in earnest, but the moment I actually got some water into his mouth he soothed right away.

After a moment, he brought his hand up, fighting to get it out from under the blanket and Wufei's coat, and held the bottle feebly, just touching it, as if trying to be certain it was actually there. Then he blinked his eyes open, and instantly the spell was recast.

His entire body softened in my arms as he relaxed, staring at me. His eyes, which were now red and puffy, blinked away the tears and he went straight back to staring at me as if I were giving him the world on a silver platter, and not just day old water from a soldier's flask.

"Hello again, Little One," I said, as tenderly as I could muster. He drank for a little while, staring up at me, calm and quiet as a mouse.

The soldier that had been soaking his rations in water gave them to me. "I don't think we should wait for the miss's broth," he whispered, as if frightened to break the calm.

My peripheral vision allowed me to see what was in the bowl of water, some of his hard bread, soaked till soft and a little mushy, and one of the biscuits still dry and hard as a rock in there. I pulled the bottle from Little One's lips, but he got so upset when I did that I had it back in his mouth in seconds, hushing him before he started crying again.

He grabbed at it feebly, trying to keep it near, and I helped him, guiding his wrist toward it so that he could hold it. "Just for a moment," I said, as I pulled it from his lips. I capped it in case he dropped it, and reached for the soggy bread, fumbling for it out of the corner of my eye. I brought it to his lips, opened his mouth for it with my pinkie, and pushed the small morsel into his mouth.

He blinked for a moment, and then seemed to swallow it whole. Then he pleased me to an unimaginable extent by opening his mouth for another.

I smiled proudly. "That's it," I said, "that's it exactly. Just a bit more. I'm taking you far away from here soon, Little One."

His eyes lit up a bit, and I saw that he was coming to, and this was not the place I wanted him to come to in, so I tried to soothe him and keep his eyes on me. "We're going away, Little One. There's a room for us, not far from here, where we're going to stay for a little while. It's going to be warm for you while you get better. After that, I'm taking you home with me, where you'll always have a warm bed and plenty of food."

After a moment I realised that he didn't understand me, at least, not much. Calling him Little One did, as he had said, put him in a good mindset, it even made him attempt to smile for me. He also liked the words "warm", "food", and "home", but everything in between seemed to just confuse him. So I started just putting those words in heavy rotation, shoving them into as many sentences as I could as I fed him.

"Back home, it's very warm, with lots of food, Little One. You'll get three meals a day, and a warm, warm bed, at home with me, Little One, very soon."

Soon enough the bread was gone, but I balked at trying to feed him the biscuit, because it was still quite solid and all he had done with the bread was swallow it whole. "Hold on a minute, Little One, while I ask my friend Wufei a question about our warm bed at the inn," I said, still staring Little One in the eye.

"Yes?" Wufei whispered.

"When can we go?" I asked, as I uncapped the bottle resting on Little One's chest and brought it back to his lips for him. He smiled at me, stronger this time than any of the others, and took the small sips I gave him.

"When he's warm enough to brave the outside," Wufei said. "You've done well. You look exhausted. Try to get him to sleep, so you can too. I've sent Relena to fetch the broth from the inn when it's ready. Let him rest for a bit."

I nodded, still holding gaze. "Little One," I said softly, "Love, it's time for you to sleep now. More food when you wake up." I sincerely doubted he understood my promise of food after sleeping, but I just wanted to calm him in case he got scared when I moved him. He did, a little bit, seeming to have learned from the last time that moving equals loss of eye contact, but this time I didn't break eyes.

I laid him down across the hearth in front of the now bustling fire, thankful that someone had lain a blanket there earlier. It was still hard as the stone beneath it, and I grimaced as I laid his head down on the hard surface. He didn't like that. The hand that wasn't clutching at the water bottle began searching feebly for me, trying to get to me, and as it fumbled around on the ground, I realised something terrible that I hadn't seen before.

He was near sighted. He couldn't see me.

It was bad, too. His eyes were searching for me, blinking rapidly, squinting, and he fumbled with his hand on the blanketed floor, trying to feel for me instead of grasping where he saw me.

I quickly ducked my head back in, pressing my forehead to him. "It's okay," I said, "I didn't leave - "

He let out a strangled howl as soon as I said the word leave. "No, no, I'm not leaving," I corrected, but clearly negatives were beyond his comprehension at the time. "I'm staying," I corrected again. "I'm here. I'm staying."

He calmed again, staring at me, with a horrid fearful expression on his face, and I worried I'd never be able to make him sleep now. Careful not to leave his pitiful sight range, I lay down next to him, tilting his head to the side so we could look at each other. I gathered his little body in my arms and smiled at him, hoping to calm him.

"Sleep," I said. "I'm here. I'll be here when you wake up. Sleep."

And then he simply closed his eyes and was gone, as if I had been the only thing he had been awake for to begin with, while I tried to wrap my head around things.

He was near sighted. He wasn't in our dreams.

He seemed to like me. That wasn't supposed to happen at all, not that I was complaining.

_Primary mission success._

_Secondary mission, tentative success. In progress._

_New primary mission: Maintain peace._

_Secondary mission in progress._


	8. Maintain Peace Part 2

**Heero**

I do not recall falling asleep. I supposed most people didn't, but I could usually pinpoint when I fell asleep. My mind was always running, hyper-active and thinking, and usually, I tended to collapse into sleep mid-activity. This meant I always remembered what I was doing just before.

When I woke up, I didn't. I had somehow managed to slowly drift off to sleep as opposed to my usual "Think, read, think, think, thi - sleep" routine.

I remembered Little One falling asleep. Between that and waking up, I remember Wufei and someone else talking, but not what they talked about, and I think Little One twitched a few times feebly, but I couldn't put those events in any chronological order.

Some combination of stress, exhaustion, and holding Little One had lulled me off to sleep.

I was woken by the girl returning with the broth. Her shoes on the wood floor woke me, far too loud for my sleeping mind to handle. Wufei tried to hush her, to not wake me or Little One, but it was too late for me. Little One was dead to the world, but seemed alright, besides the continuous random twitching.

I heard Wufei kneel beside me and felt him lay a hand on my arm. "Lord Yuy, wake up, please. Time to feed him."

"I'm awake," I whispered, afraid to wake Little One early. I didn't want him awake until everything was in place and I was inside his range of vision.

"Good," Wufei said. "I've sent for the village doctor. I don't know if he'll be any good, but it's surely better than nothing."

"Surely," I agreed, moving slowly to sit up. I looked at Little One for a moment, trying to figure the best way to feed him - sitting up clearly was out of the question. I ended up pulling him into my lap, to rest his head in the crook of my elbow again.

He stirred, anxiously, twitching again, and his eyes flew open. I was instantly aware he was in a panic.

"Master," he croaked out. I was in his line of vision. He said it straight at me.

I gaped for a moment, unaware of exactly what to do in that moment. He was still not completely coherent, I could tell by the furrow of his brow and the tone in his voice.

"It's okay," I said, trying to figure out what to say to that. '_I'm not your master, I love you too much, instead I'm just going to keep you as a hostage so that I can see the future_,' was just a bit too much for him to handle. "I won't hurt you," I said, but then remembered our earlier troubles with negatives. "I'm helping you," I rephrased.

He just stared at me for a moment, then his arms began half fumbling, half twitching under the blanket. After a moment, his eyes left mine, looking downwards, and he became visibly distressed.

"What? What is it, Little One?" I asked, as soothingly as possible, and he looked back at me, blinking back tears.

"I ... lost it," he said, and from there all hell broke loose, as he became inconsolable.

"Lost what?" I asked, but he was too far gone, and I doubted he could hear me over his own howling.

It continued for far too long, and was broken only when he managed to get his hands out from under the blanket and clutched wildly at my clothing, curling up into me, turning his face into my arm. Something about the affectionate embrace brought on the fiercest of premonitions.

It appeared that it was all true - Seeing was directly correlated to our relationship.

Premonitions are odd things, and it's extraordinarily rare to get a helpful one, let alone an easy to decipher one. They weren't always the future, either, sometimes they were the past. And this one was as such.

I saw him lying on the cellar floor, with parched lips and dry, flaky skin. He licked his lips slowly, with a dry, rough tongue, and then he opened his eyes and stared at me with pure hatred. It was exceedingly rare for me to be looked at during a premonition, as I was but a fly on the wall in most cases, so of course, my first instinct was to step aside and look at what was behind me.

Wine. Lots and lots of wine.

Dying of thirst in a fully stocked cellar.

When I snapped out of it, no time had passed in the real world, which was often the case. Time and magic don't get along, they often just shoulder past one another in order to get to the forefront of the world.

I looked about the floor, realising what my Little One had lost, while everyone else looked about in complete shock, unawares of the problem or what to do. I snapped my fingers to get Wufei's attention, and pointed to his water flask that lay on the floor just out of my reach.

He grabbed it immediately, uncapped it and gave it to me.

Little One and I repeated the exact same process as the last two times I'd given him the water. He balked when it reached his lips, fighting in earnest, and I was actually pleased that he could fight harder now. A little soggy bread, warmth, and water had already done wonders for him. I could only imagine what broth would do.

I managed to force the water into his mouth and then he calmed again.

I couldn't be sure, but I thought that perhaps he thought I was trying to give him wine. After living with a drunk for who knew how long, it made sense to me that he would fight that.

I spoke to him in soft tones again, trying to relax him again, but it was quite some time before he would open his eyes and start hearing me properly. Once calmed, I didn't dare take the water from his lips, but he solved that problem for me by finishing the whole thing. Once he realised it was empty, I feared another explosion of crying, but he surprised me and just held on the empty flask as if it were still worth something.

After that, the water situation repeated again with the broth. It took a bit longer for him to stop fighting me, but it happened eventually, and he drank it willingly but slowly, eyes on me the whole time.

He slowly began to come to afterwards, though I tried to get him to rest again. He kept squinting and looking around in flashes, no longer locking his eyes on me, now content with just his hand fisted in my shirt. He wasn't looking at the house, or the others, or at anything in particular, but he always looked away suddenly, as if he had seen something out of the corner of his eye and it had frightened him. I thought he was delirious.

Every now and then he would speak, saying "Master?" at me, in the most questioning tone, as if he wasn't sure I was really there. I made certain to always answer him, reaffirm him as to my solidarity and my kindness. After what seemed like hours of this, he tried to pull himself up to sit, and managed to get halfway there, which surprised me and led me to believe that his health was not as bad as I was fearing, and perhaps he was simply suffering from a few days without water and malnutrition. Perhaps the only reason he was going to die was because his master had died while he was locked in there, leaving him to die of thirst.

_But how did he know that fifteen days beforehand?_

But he did only get halfway when he tried to sit, leaving me to catch him. I decided that rather than have him try it again, I would help him sit up. Once up, he further surprised me by pressing his forehead into my neck and relaxing into me.

His acquiescence confounded me, scared me, upset me, and pleased me all at once. It was as if it might have been the beginning of a beautiful relationship between us, and that wasn't supposed to happen. He was supposed to hate me. To protect myself, I had to assume that he was only behaving this way because he wasn't coherent enough to understand what was happening. 'I have to have a wall around my heart', Trowa told me, 'because otherwise, Quatre will waltz in and crush it, then waltz back out with a smile.'

He fell asleep curled up in my lap with his head on my shoulder. After a minute, Wufei moved an armchair so that I could rest my back on it, and I stayed there for a while, warming up in front of the fire, dreading the walk through the town in the cold night air to get to the inn, but knowing I had to. Sooner or later, half blind or not, my Little One was going to realise where he was, and when he did, I wanted him to be clean, fully clothed, and not in the house I had found him in.

Wufei sat next to us, and spoke to me quietly to not wake him. "We have to go soon," he said. "One of the girls at the inn sent for the town doctor. He'll be meeting us there."

I nodded. "Good," I said. "How much do you know about his master?"

"It's you, now," Wufei said. "This has happened before, a few times. When the Seerbound is a slave, the King usually just purchases them for double price, and keeps them under your care. Sometimes, if things get bad enough, Seers have collared their Binds just to try and get some submission out of them. Sometimes it works, sometimes not."

I grit my teeth. "I don't want a slave," I said. "He knows that, he knows how it works. I want a lover. Him being a slave is detrimental to that."

"I understand that," Wufei said. "But it only works that way if him being a lover is an option. If he were to love you, then the entire country would give him whatever he wanted, freedom inclusive. But if he won't love you, he has to submit. If he's a slave, he's halfway there already."

I sighed. "I know, and the point is valid, but I dislike it. Once we are home, I will talk to Zechs about it. If he disagrees, I will deal with it then."

"I can't say I blame you," Wufei said. "Can you imagine what would happen if Lord Barton put a collar on Quatre?" he snorted.

"He'd be dead by morning," I agreed. "What do you know about the drunk?" I rephrased.

Wufei shrugged. "His name was Geordi. Town drunk, town recluse. He only left the house to buy drink. He was only ever visited by his nephew - they contacted him yesterday when we found him. Everyone liked the nephew, nobody liked Geordi."

"No one knew about Little One."

"I doubt it. No one seemed like they were lying yesterday, and if they did know about him, they were just letting him rot down there. They would have at least fed him, even if they were traitors. The longer they keep him alive, the longer you're not Seeing."

I hummed in agreement. "We should go," I said, but made no move to get up, not wanting to spoil the moment, the perfect position of my Little One, calm and quiet in my arms.

"Heero," Wufei said, commanding my full attention. "We _should_ go. Under no circumstance should you get used to this."

I directed my attention to him slowly, not wanting to face the subject. "I know," I said quietly. "And every moment I sit here is tainted by the fact that I know it will not last. But you must understand, I may never have this again, so I must respect it, tainted as it is."

Wufei solemnly nodded. "The good news is, we have him now. The bad news is that his time in the cellar may not be his only problem."

I looked at him, questioning his logic. "Further problems?" I asked.

Wufei looked worryingly at me. "He knew he was dying fifteen days ago, Heero. Geordi only died four days ago, at most. So what was killing him the eleven days Geordi was still alive?"

I clutched Little One closer. "I know," I said. "I think he can leech magic from the dreams. That's the only way he could have known what direction we were going in."

Wufei was clearly worried. "It's just that ... history disagrees. It's abnormal. I am worried that things are not as clear cut here as they should be. And if things are normal, and those were normal dreams, then you can figure out what we have here. And that will get us into all sorts of trouble."

"You think he's a Seer," I said.

"I am merely entertaining the only scenario that history agrees with," Wufei said. "It's the only way he could have known these things."

"He's not our Seer," I grumbled. "We already have two. Noin has two. Kushrenada has one, but the other should only be eight. If he's not ours, he's a long way from anyone that would claim him."

"If he's not ours, he's going to want his Seerbound eventually," Wufei grumbled.

The mere concept upset me. "Is that what happened?" I asked. "In history?"

He looked at me, clearly upset. "It wasn't a fun tale. I'll give you the book when we are home."

I gingerly kissed the top of Little One's head. "We'll deal with it," I said to his sleeping form. "Whatever happens, we'll deal with it. You'll be alright."

Wufei shook his head at me. "Heero, have you seen his feet?"

I furrowed my brow. "What about them?"

He kept shaking his head. "He's got ... marks, and too much callusing ... all on his feet and knees. I've never seen anything like it. I fear ... I fear that he was dying from something else, something medical, fifteen days ago. We need to get him to the doctor."

"Show me," I said.

I hadn't seen it in the flickering light. But closer inspection revealed that he did in fact, have calluses all up his feet, even in places walking could not have caused. His smallest toes were covered in unsightly corns.

WuFei brought the light closer - a lantern, now, which they must have found in the house somewhere, and showed me the calluses on his knees. His skin elsewhere was flaky, and closer inspection revealed tiny red dots splattered about. Many were on his left ankle, but they clustered in other places too.

Most upsetting was the bruising. He had unsightly bruises near everywhere, which darkness had concealed as shadows. We kept the blankets on him for warmth and to keep his modesty, but I doubted that there was any change further up.

He was horribly pale, as death itself, and that was concerning.

Eventually Wufei managed to prod me into standing up with him, and walked me to the door. He woke up, I knew he did, because I felt him furrow his brow on my neck, but he did not move, not even to open his eyes. When we walked out of the warm house and into the cold night, he curled into himself reflexively, and I sped up as Relena led us to the inn.


	9. Maintain Peace part 3

**Heero**

"My name is Jauffre, I will take a good look, but first, please tell me all _you_ know," the doctor said, looking at me kindly, yet with that air of haughty superiority that doctors always possess. "I was told he belonged to the late Geordi Raven, but I do not recall ever meeting or being told of this lad."

He waved a hand at the boy in my arms.

"I don't have any reason to believe that any of the townsfolk knew about him," I said. "We found him locked in the old man's cellar."

The inn was warm, almost hot. One of the girls was preparing a tub of hot water for a sponge bath, the matron tended the roaring fire, and I sat on the bed with Little One still wrapped in my embrace, back asleep in my arms.

The blanket we were wrapped up in was warm, as some kindhearted soul had the forethought to set it to warm next to the fire for us.

I was going to leave these people the largest tip they would ever get.

The doctor could only see Little One's hair, as he was wrapped up in the blanket, settled on my thighs with his face in my neck.

The girl left the water on a stool next to the bed with a washcloth and soap, then nudged her mother out of the room, nodding to me respectfully as she left.

I mouthed a 'thankyou' to her and she smiled as she closed the door.

Only Wufei stayed with me, Little One, and the doctor. Wufei cleared his throat. "He would have been in there since at least when Geordi passed, but we have ... prophetic reasons to believe that he was sick before that. He has some marks, a lot of calluses, a lot of bruises - "

"He's delirious and mostly blind," I added.

"He's blind?" Wufei questioned. "He's been looking around."

"He can't see past arm's length. He gets terrified if I am not in that distance, and he starts trying to feel around for me."

"He's not talking, then?" the doctor questioned, as he leaned in closer, sitting down on the foot of the bed, and began peeling the blanket from Little One's shoulder.

"He's delirious. I think he's also been seeing things. The only thing he has said to me is 'Master', but he says it as though he's trying to figure out who I am."

The doctor was deliberately gentle and careful about my Little One's modesty as he slowly pulled his hand out from under the blanket, then tucked the blanket back into him. He began doing those "doctor-y" things that all doctors do, but I didn't understand the relevance of.

"Was there food and water with him in the cellar, or evidence that he had been left with any before Geordi passed?"

"I didn't stay to look," I said.

"There wasn't any food, or empty dishes," Wufei said. "And there was plenty of wine, but none of it was touched, no empty bottles."

"Good," the doctor said. "Wine would have done more harm than good."

He pinched the skin on the back of Little One's hand, but not hard, then harrumphed, turning his hand over to see his palm. "Calluses like these?" he asked, showing his hand to me, where I saw many on the meat of his palm and fingers.

"Yes," I said. "And bruises like that one," I pointed to one on his elbow, "Everywhere."

"And the red spots, are they everywhere too?"

"They converge around his left ankle, but they're everywhere too."

"Do you have any idea how long he had been in the cellar?"

It was the dreaded question, the one I had been trying not to ask. I didn't want to know how long he had been there. The mere thought of it scared me.

I shook my head numbly.

Wufei spoke again, clearing his throat. "There's also the matter of ... why he was down there. It's quite likely that he's been ... raped." He fumbled around the word as if it were gunk in his mouth, grimacing as though it tasted bad.

I looked at him angrily. "Quite likely? _Quite likely?_" I spat. "For what other reason does anyone keep a naked slave in their cellar?"

"We shall have a look in a moment," the doctor said. "Have you fed or watered him since you brought him out?"

"Yes," I said. "He's had a full waterskin, a bowl of broth, and some water-soaked bread."

"And has he retched any?"

"No," I said. "But he doesn't eat or drink fast, and I've been throttling the speed I will give him anything."

"Good, good," the doctor said. "He's quite lethargic, yes? He should have woken up with all this going on around him. Has he been sleeping like this the whole time?"

"No," I told him. "He's been awake. He stares at me a lot, like he's confused. I think it's exhausted him."

"Hmm," the doctor said. "Alright, out of the blanket. Lie him on his side. We'll get this over with quick."

As I did, Little One woke up a bit, and was lucky enough to be close enough to see me at the time. "Rest now," I said, putting his head gingerly on the pillow.

"Good Lord," the doctor said under his breath as Little One was laid down. "Hard to gauge size under a blanket, but really. Geordi, you old bastard, what were you thinking?"

My Little One was very thin, I knew it, but it had surprised the doctor even. I looked at him, trying to guess from his expression exactly how bad things were. Then suddenly Jauffre had his head cocked to the side as he looked at the thin form on the bed. "I wonder," he said quietly. "Open his mouth for me?"

I gently prized apart Little One's lips, opening his mouth for the doctor to see. His teeth were nothing special, quite bad, but it was his gums that worried me, as they were bright red and raw looking. The doctor chose the moment when Little One was staring at me, confused and distracted, to quickly move his leg to check his opening.

Then, equally as quickly, without even touching him there, he closed his legs back and pulled the blanket up over him again. "A little wider," he said to me, and I opened my Little One's mouth further, as Doctor Jauffre looked inside.

Then he surprised us both by cracking a grin. "Avast!" he said jokingly. "Ye scurvy dog!"

"_Scurvy?_"

Jauffre smirked. "Once he's eating solid food, give him two oranges a day. Until then, juice of a lemon in his soup. Oh, and the paleness - he needs an hour of sun every day. Sit him in front of a window. No medication. It looks far worse than it is. He needs to eat better, but I'll warrant you good folks knew that already."

"How did he get scurvy?" I asked, thoroughly confused, as I pulled the blankets back up over him.

"All humans have scurvy," Jauffre said. "But the treatment for scurvy is fruit, which is something we eat all the time. The only reason anyone gets symptoms is that they go too long without the appropriate treatment." Jauffre cleared his throat, but lowered his voice. "He's not bleeding, or raw. If there was serious internal damage, it would be bleeding, or there would be dried blood. It is as you said though, there are not many other reasons a man keeps a slave in their cellar and doesn't feed them properly. It is likely there is damage, but unlikely that it will not repair itself. Best leave it alone at this point, and I will give you a salve, if he complains, let him apply it himself. I don't think I need to tell you that the chances of him accepting you in his bed are entirely non-existent."

"They were non-existent before all this."

"Well, yes," Jauffre said sadly. "That is what they say about it." He peered at me out of his knowing, educated, doctor's eyes. "You saved my son, you know," he began. "When the lighthouse fire went out, over two years ago."

"I don't recall," I said truthfully.

"I didn't expect you would, busy man such as yourself," Jauffre conceded.

"It may have been Trowa."

"Lord Barton? No, he had his Seerbound by then."

I paused. It was highly unlikely that Trowa had done anything to help anyone after the arrival of Quatre, especially not something as momentous as prevent or give warning about a lighthouse fire. It had probably been me, but I felt the need to stand up for Trowa, to stand up for Seerbounds. Even if that meant standing up for Quatre.

"They don't make us _completely_ useless, you know."

Jauffre looked at me quizzically. "As I understood it, they're supposed to heighten your power, if they behave. Why is it that a Seer, such as yourself or Lord Barton, can be captured and forced to serve, and you do it willingly, and yet they cannot? And they're so bad at it that they dampen your ability instead? It just angers me, that is all, my Lord. You are the last person I would wish this on."

Eventually, after some tense silence, Jauffre huffed and moved on. "I wish you the very best of luck with him. I'll have my boy send over the salve, and a written report for your city doctor. I recommend you stay put for a day or two, to get him adjusted to warmth and a good day's rest before you travel. He should be moved in a covered wagon, where he can sleep as peacefully as possible. I'll write all these instructions down, also."

"Do you recommend one day here, or two?"

"Two would be best for his health, but if he perks up, the one is fine, if you're in a rush."

Wufei nodded. "Two then. His health is our only concern at the moment, though we are in a rush. Why do you recommend a wagon?"

"A multitude of simple reasons," Jauffre said. "If he falls from horseback, it's likely to shatter his bones. Could kill him, no one wants that. He's too sick to be stable on a horse on his own, and far too sick to be outside all day, sitting upright. Though he's not in any immediate danger, now that he's being fed and watered, he's not going to recover _quickly_. He's malnourished. Judging from the colour of his skin he was inside that cellar a long time. You can't just take a sick man from a cellar and thrust him straight into the world and expect him to cope."

"What about his eyes? Will they get any better?"

"It's impossible to tell. I've no expertise in eyes. I suggest you take it up with your doctors at the capital, I'm certain there will be one there who will know. Scurvy does not usually bring about blindness, at least, not at this stage of development. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the sight problems are due to the dehydration of the last few days, and the cellar. There's no point in good eyesight if you're stuck in a tiny dark room."

I nodded, and kept my eyes on my Little One. He had begun to wake up. I could tell he was faring better, though, even though he hadn't opened his eyes. He had pursed his lips, his brow furrowed, and his eyes twitched. He was concentrating, listening to the doctor.

I had to fill him in. The poor thing was waking up halfway through what was probably the most important thing in the world to him. He had clearly thought he was going to die. He hadn't wanted to when I had dreamed with him earlier. Now I had the wonderful job of telling him he would be alright.

"So, just to go over this again," I said. "He'll be alright, he just needs rest, food, specifically fruit, and a little bit of sun."

"Precisely," the doctor said.

I saw my Little One's jaw set. He'd heard that, and understood it, I was fairly sure. But I didn't know what the set of his jaw meant, or the increase of the furrow of his brow from concentrating to determined meant. Only that I hoped it was good.

I was dead wrong.

Over the next few days, Quatre, the boy who had to wear shackles to bed for fear of trying to murder people, was going to earn the tentative title of 'The Good One'.

**A/N:**

Duo is suffering from two diseases (and it's a miracle he ain't got more). Scurvy, as we all know, is a lack of vitamin C, in which the medieval diet was sorely lacking to begin with. Scurvy was actually not truly found and understood until the 1900s, but I've taken creative license.

The red spots are called petachiae and are something everyone gets every now and then, they are a bursting of blood vessels under the skin. Harmless, and they go away fast. They are caused by either a weakening of the blood vessels (scurvy can cause this) or excessive force on the area (drunkards can cause this). They are frequently caused by: excessive coughing, vomiting, crying, and believe it or not, you can get them in your mouth if you suck hard enough while giving head.

Duo also has a vitamin D deficiency (also lacking in the medieval diet). Vitamin D is also absorbed through sunlight (of which there was none in cellarland). The diagnosing factor for this disease would have been how retardedly pale he would have been. The excess callusing is a fairly rarish result of this (called hyperkeratosis).

Other symptoms that they don't know about include bone pain, muscle pain, lethargy, serious confusion, memory loss, (vitamin D deficiency leads to dementia in late stages).

As for the blindness, you can all mull over that for yourselves. I can't be expected to tell you _everything_ :P


	10. Maintain Peace part 4

**_Myth and Magick_**

**_Lord Chang Wufei, Mythical Advisory to King Zechs Marquis_**

_Magic is often referred to as magick, majic, majik, magicka. All have their different meanings and pronunciations, though most do not know the difference. Usually, the word Magic encompasses all the different meanings, but to be specific:_

_Magic is a known thing, a thing that is controlled for a use: spells, charms, wards. Magick, which is what is being discussed, is the unknown and uncontrollable force, that which we do not know, cannot control, and do not ever understand fully. While a magician uses magic, Magick uses the magician. Seers are infected with Magick. It uses them as its vessel._

_Majic is the voodoo, the tribal use of magic in a primal form. Majik is the same, ununderstandable. Majic is when a tribe chief dances to bring rain. Majik is when a hyena steals the soul of a tribe member._

_Magicka is another thing entirely. Magicka is the act of magic using magic - wherein a curse will fail to apply, no matter the skill of the magician, an army will suddenly stop in its tracks for no reason. Magicka is where the magic, for whatever reason, has decided that things must change. Usually this occurs in situations most dire - the fall of Andora, for example, occurred because Andora began to rely so heavily on magic that it strained the fabrics of the arcane. What little Seer's reports have been translated from that time speak of troubling premonitions, the end of the world, the death of all things. Andora, though we live on the land and are descendants of its people, was lost. All the buildings disappeared overnight, the culture, the lifestyle, the items. The people woke up one morning with no memory of Old Andora, and only the skin on their backs. It is believed that Andora's promiscuous use of magic had strained the arcane powers too much, and as a result, Magicka intervened and simply removed the problem. Andora is lost, and the only reasons we know it ever existed are from items, books, tales and records that were stored outside the province at the time of Andora's destruction._

_Magic, in all its forms and spellings, is dying. Of this we are fairly certain. Of the old Andoran people, there was a magician for every three men. Now, we are limited to two Seers per King. Common theories are that the abuse of magic and the exertion required destroying Andora brought about the slow, gasping death of all magic._

_All magicians have disappeared, as it is impossible to command magic. It is believed that magic is long dead. As for magick, the wild and uncontrollable type, it is still here, but only in the form of Seers, and there are fewer Seers than there were, though it is conceivable that this is explainable. Old Andora was composed of fiefdoms - a King lived in every city. As there are always two Seers per King, it is a theoretical possibility that there are less Seers purely because there are less Kings._

_There are also the old Andoran tales of magicks - a whole range of people blessed with magick existed._

_For every King, there were two Seers, one Torturer, two miscellaneous and unique powers, one Healer, two Invulnerables and two Destroyers. These powers were strange, unusual, and unpredictable, but in magick there is always a rule: Opposing force._

_It is said that opposites attract, and in all Andoran tales, it is proven true in magick. For all dominance, there must be submission, for pain, pleasure, for love, hate. Every person with magick must have a Bind, their opposing force, different, but bound to them, like light and shadow._

_The Seers would always find their Binds amongst the other powers, never another Seer, usually in the two with the unique powers. The Torturer would pair with the healer, the two Invulnerables with two Destroyers. Every one of them would find love in a Bind, and every one of them would find opposing hatred. This created some rather disturbing events, where love and loathing mixed into peculiar relationships. _

_Since Andora's fall, and the rise of the modern world, magick has decayed to the point where there are now only Seers. Since two Seers cannot Bind together (opposing force: they must be opposites for an acceptable Bind), and the results of such a Bind have proven disturbing on the rare occasion that it does occur, it is a theoretical possibility that due to the unavailability of a Bind with magick, the magick is simply trying to find someone compatible to push its Bind on._

_It is possibly due to this incompatibility that Binds are so prone to manic disease. Their Seer is forced by magick to fall in love with them, but the Bind has no such inclination, and is not a vessel for magick. Furthermore, as there are less magick vessels, for the Seer's love, there must also be a hate. Perhaps one could assume that the Seer loves for both of them, while the Bind hates for them both. One might say that these relationships are better than what occurred with magick users and Binds before the fall of Andora. What texts have been unearthed state that although they loved one another, they also hated one another, and due to the rule of opposing force, they could never coordinate in order to love or hate at the same time. They always had to maintain opposites, though they would frequently switch places, the one who loved would hate, and the one who hated would love. One might argue that things are better the way they are now._

_Magick seems to be attempting to survive, and the Seers have held out the longest. One must question this. Are Seers simply the last to disappear, or has the Seer's magick managed to survive? Andoran texts often imply that Seers are "Necessary for Cohesion" - a direct translation. If one assumes that this means that the Seers are the ones who, using their Sight, locate the rest of the magick users and bring them all together, then one can assume it would be logical for magic to reserve enough strength to maintain the Seers. One must now question whether magic will ever return in full force. _

_It could be argued that magic learned a lesson with Andora, and will not fall prey to that mistake again. Magicians, who may abuse magic, may never be seen again; however, if the magic is capable of regenerating, then perhaps we may see a few more magick users._

_One cannot be certain which way the scales will tip. Our world may, in the next thousand years, lose all magic, forever, or, we may gain it back. One can only pray that whatever happens, whenever it happens, if it ever happens, is for the better._

**Heero**

After the doctor left, I ordered everyone out and bathed and dried him one limb at a time, letting him retain the comfort and modesty of the linens. He seemed to be in some sort of trance while I did, though I was certain that the warm water on his dirty skin must have been all sorts of comforting. He maintained his closed eyes, furrowed brow and set jaw.

Once done with everything I could reach without moving him, I slowly helped him to sit up, and held him upright while I washed his back and then front. During this he made a funny face, still not opening his eyes, but a sort of grimace. He turned his face away and curled his hands into fists while I washed his nether regions, whispering "It's ok," into his ear.

He had become so tense during this that I knew he would be stock still and upright, in no danger of falling, when I moved. I left him sitting there, and went to get the bathrobe the inn girls had given us.

As I picked it up, I saw that underneath it lay both a nightshirt and drawstring trunks. They were both going to engulf his tiny form but it filled me with happiness. 'The common people', they were called. Common indeed. I left the robe and took the nightshirt and trunks to him.

As I slowly started to lift his ankle to put his foot into the leg of the trunks, his expected resistance started in a most acceptable way.

"No," he said, a little bit loudly, very forcefully and clearly. His eyes were still shut. He yanked his ankle out from my hand, placing it beside his other one, his legs tightly together.

It was clear to me what he had thought I was going to do. His resistance to that actually pleased me - I didn't want my beautiful, wonderful Little One to be broken.

The set of his jaw and furrow of his brow told me, quite clearly, that he was far, far from it. From the look of him, his mind could have gone another thousand years down there, if only his pesky body hadn't failed from dehydration and scurvy.

"It's -"

"No," he said again, a little bit louder, the moment I started speaking. He shook his head.

When I took a breath to try and explain the clothing to him, he interrupted before I could speak. "I won't," he said, very forcefully.

This all pleased me. He clearly wasn't some old man's mindless toy. He would recover. He was clearly very strong.

This presented me with the problem of how to get him clothed. I couldn't tell him to open his eyes; he was interrupting me every time I spoke. I opted to put the article of clothing into his hands without a word.

His set brow furrowed in confusion, and he moved his head as if to look at what was in his hands, but stubbornly refused to open his eyes. He fumbled with them for a moment, running his hands over them as if it had been so long since he had felt anything like it. After a while, realization seemed to dawn on him, what they were, what I had given him. He touched his knee with one hand, as if to make sure it was still there, in the right spot, and the two things were related in their purpose.

He managed to slowly sort out the waist of the trunks from the leg holes. He even had the presence of mind to sort out the drawstring front from the back. Then he tried to stretch his body to get them on, without opening his legs too much. There he encountered a problem: he wasn't flexible enough.

Proof that he had been down there, huddled in the cold, with nothing to do and nowhere to go, was beginning to become insurmountable. It was undeniable he had been down there a long time. The only question now was how long.

More than days, clearly. He had lost flexibility. He could hardly touch his toes, no matter how he bent his knees. He was going to have to open his legs, or get my help, to get those trunks on.

I moved away from him, making certain he could hear my heavy footsteps. Only when I was at the other end of the room did he decide it would be okay to open his knees in order get into them one leg at a time. Splayed open, he could access his ankles better, but he still had to wrestle, and he stubbornly refused to open his eyes.

He did manage to get them on, however. He even pulled them up, one side at a time, and tied the drawstring firmly. He also knotted it, by feel, in what looked to me to be some sort of proper knot, not a simple bowtie.

He was clearly a fighter. He wasn't going to let me anywhere _near_ his virtue, or what was left of it. I was happy with that.

When I moved back to him, he snapped his head in my direction, moving with me as though he could see me with ears alone. I got to his side and pulled the blankets back up over his legs. I sat next to him, and I learned that it is possible for a man to narrow their eyes at you with their eyes closed.

I put a hand on his shoulder, meaning to try to comfort him, but he immediately shrugged it off. The movement made him lose balance - he pushed himself off my hand rather than my hand off him. He staggered and nearly fell to the bed, but caught himself, and instead lowered himself onto it on his own terms. His eyes were still shut. Not even the surprise made him open them.

He arranged himself on the bad with his back to me, and grabbed for the covers. I pulled them up for him, tucking him in. He didn't thank me.

At the time, I didn't need him to. What he had given me was good enough.

After a time of me simply watching over him, it occurred to me that sooner or later I would have to sleep too, or at least try to. He had fallen asleep with the determined set of his jaw, and that worried me a bit. I wanted him to be more relaxed, at least while sleeping.

I gingerly lay down beside him, careful not to lie on any of his still unwashed, grungy hair, and tried to sleep.

I couldn't.

After about an hour, I decided he was in a deep enough sleep for me to reach out to him, even just to touch his back. I was glad I did, because he had a chill. So I scooted closer, to try to hold him, warm him, without waking him.

No such luck. He stirred as I wrapped my arms around him.

"No," he said, eyes still shut. "No. Geordi ..."

"He's gone," I said. "It's okay now. Geordi's dead."

There was a moment's silence, where he didn't even breathe. Then he spoke again.

"_I knew it_," he said vehemently, then turned his face into the pillow. "_Bastard_," he spat.

I tried to calm him. "It's okay," I said.

"Fuck if it's okay," he growled, eyes slammed shut. "Don't you dare. Don't you _dare_ tell me it's okay. I hope you fuck off and die in a hole."

I didn't know quite what to say, until I remembered my little stunt of tricking him. Clearly he was now upset with me, even after he'd changed his mind about wanting to die.

"I'm -"

"_Fuck off and die!"_ he spat, interrupting me. "I never want to hear your slimy voice again. Crawl into a hole so that the devil can take you to the depths of hell faster. You have no right to speak in my presence. You're a worthless toad of a man."

And though I knew, logically, that he was wrong, I was a good person, and the whole kingdom disagreed with him, that was exactly how I felt. Like a worthless, slimy frog, wanted by the devil for unspeakable crimes.

"Sorry," I whispered into his back, knowing he would interrupt me if I made a longer apology.

"Fuck off and die," he repeated. He shifted in my arms, as far away from me as he could. "I'm done with you now. Shut up and let me sleep. If you don't, I'll scream until I throw up."

Unsure of what to do with that threat, I stayed perfectly still and silent.

"Good choice, you dumb shit," he said, turning his face further into the pillow.

And that was my goodnight.

_Primary mission failed._

_Secondary mission failed._

_New primary mission: Make him not hate me._


	11. Primary Mission: Make Him Not Hate Me

Elle Writes - Glad you gave it a go :) Seer's are useful when they have Binds, just not as useful. Generally it goes: Seer without Bind can foresee a war and how to prevent it, but the same Seer when he gets his Bind can foresee a war, but not who it's against, when it will happen, and if it will happen for sure. Though that premonition, and the strength of it (also whether or not he can decipher the premonition, they can be finicky) depend on the submission of the Bind. More will come on how seeing the future works when people actually start seeing the future in the story.

Pikeebo - The information on magic, magick, majic, majik, and magicka was entirely made up. Though in my experience, with other stories and lores, people generally use "magick" when they mean the supernatural uncontrollable type stuff, and anything spelt with a J is usually just when people want to differentiate themselves from the usual magic literature. Magicka is so rarely used, but usually a combination of "I want to be different" and "This magic is a bit more alive and uncontrollable". Again, that's just what I've noticed in my reading, and may not be true in all books/real life. Basically, grab a wand and shoot stuff with it = magic. Feel like you're invisible then actually turn invisible = magick. Use a rainstick and it rains = majic. A rainstick comes to life and beats you up during a drought = majik. Use a rainstick during a flood and spontaneously combust = magicka.

**Primary Mission: Make him not hate me**

**Heero**

Wufei woke us up with breakfast, and before my Little One woke I told him of the change in circumstances.

"So soon? I was hoping he might be grateful for the rescue for a few days," Wufei muttered. "What did he say to you that makes you so sure he hates you already?"

"His version of a 'Sleep well' was 'I'm done with you now, shut up and let me sleep, if you don't I'll scream until I throw up'," I clarified. "That and the 'Fuck off and die'."

"What did you do to upset him that much?" Wufei asked incredulously.

I shrugged, completely unaware.

"I gave him a pair of shorts?" I said.

My movement, and the voices, seemed to have woken him up. "I can hear you," he informed me through what sounded like gritted teeth. "That's a problem. Fix it, or I start screaming."

Wufei's eyes were wide open in shock. The timid little thing from earlier was hard to reconcile with this new, angry monster. "God," he breathed out.

My Little One mistook it for me, and the screaming began.

It shocked me off the bed. Even Wufei was clearly freaked out. His screaming was _absolutely terrifying_, even to two grown men.

It was only after he stopped, and we both cleared out of the room, that we realised what had just happened.

He could project, _and_ he could throw his voice. He was about ten times louder than a normal person and he could make it sound like it was coming from one direction, then another, then another.

"He's a fucking banshee!" Wufei whispered frantically at me once we were in the hall. A whole bunch of people then showed up, peeking at us curiously, even though Little One had quietened.

"You've brought a goddamn banshee's wrath down upon us!" Wufei accused me in a whisper.

"How am I supposed to help it?" I whispered back.

"Well," came Relena's voice from down the hall. "I take it all back, he's clearly an Amraki priest," she said. "They teach them that in choirs."

"Be quiet!" I shushed her. "He's only screaming to block out the sound of my voice, if he hears you he might mistake it for me and start up again."

She stared at me in shock for a moment. "He'd rather hear that," she nodded to the wall of the hall that shared with my room, "than hear your voice?" she questioned.

"Apparently so," Wufei whispered.

Relena gave me the saddest, sweetest look. "And you have such an adorable voice," she said sadly. "I'd listen to you speak any day of the year."

"It's not you that needs to listen to me," I said quietly. "I need him to calm down. How am I supposed to give him breakfast if he won't listen to me or look at me?"

"He won't look at you either?" Wufei said incredulously. "God, it's like it's a different person in there."

"Best check on him to make sure he's okay," Relena said quietly. "He sounds quite unstable."

I had been standing with my head next to the wall, listening for just that, but in my stupidity I had forgotten that I was no longer ahead of everyone else. I wouldn't be able to stop anything I heard before it happened, because I would hear it when it happened, not before. I turned tail and stalked purposefully back into the room.

My Little One lay quietly snuggled back into the blankets, curled up with his arm over his face. I walked to him wordlessly to check on him. He would move his arm only to childishly poke his tongue out at me.

I bit back the urge to say "Don't be like that", honestly fearful of what he would do if I said anything, let alone if I dared to tell him how to act. Wufei picked up the broth he'd gotten for Little One's breakfast and handed it to me, giving me an expression that clearly stated 'Good luck'.

I sighed. The best course of action was to give it to him and let him deal with it himself. He clearly didn't need to be handfed again.

I sat tenderly next to him on the bed, and gingerly placed the bowl down near him on the bed, keeping it steady with one hand while I shooed the others out.

He had his back to me, so I placed the bowl near his face, hoping he might smell it. No such luck, not with his arm still over his face.

I took his wrist in my hand, and tried to gently guide it to the bowl, but he was having none of that either, keeping that arm firmly locked over his face. I could have forced it, but the last thing I wanted to do was hurt him, or scare him with a display of force that would remind him how weak he was.

His fingers had curled into a fist.

Stuck with inspiration, I took the spoon from the bowl, licked the broth off it so it wouldn't drip onto the bed, and wedged the handle into his fist.

This clearly confused the hell out of him, and he used his thumb to try to figure out what the little wooden utensil was, and then he seemed to get it. I guided his arm over to where the bowl was, off his face, and touched his fingers to the edge of it. He still wouldn't open his eyes, the set of his jaw the same.

He fingered the bowl, and moved to prop himself up on his elbows to get to it.

Yes, that's it, I thought. Perfect. Smell it, get hungry, eat. There's plenty more where that came from.

He sniffed it, and then I saw through the curtain of his hair that he opened his eyes and looked at it.

"Oh," he said. "Thanks."

I breathed a sigh of relief. I was about to tell him that it was okay, when he grabbed the side of the clay bowl and yanked it over, smashing it and hot broth into my arm.

He laughed. He _laughed_.

Wufei burst back into the room, and I realised that the agony of hot liquid and shards of clay in my arm had made me yell out.

Meanwhile, Little One cackled maniacally, his eyes tightly shut, but honest and true happiness on his face. He rejoiced in causing me physical pain.

WuFei cleaned up my right arm. The bowl had broken, broth was all over the bed, but Little One fell back to sleep after that, with a smile on his face.

I'd unleashed a monster.

"Maybe the drunk had a good reason for keeping him locked up down there," Wufei mumbled angrily, as he wiped a wet cloth down my arm, trying to make sure there were no fragments of bowl in my skin anymore.

"Don't say that," I whispered. "No one could deserve that."

Wufei grumbled again. "I don't mean to pry, but it took _months _before Quatre decided to hurt Trowa. What are you going to do?"

I shook my head. "I have no idea," I said sincerely. "But it won't involve letting him feed himself again."

Wufei snorted in a most ungainly fashion. "I should hope not," he said.

I sighed. "We have to get him off the bed," I said. "Feed him breakfast, change the sheets. Might as well try to wash his hair while he's out of bed. And then I have to figure out how to make him stop hating me. By tomorrow night, I have to have him ready to get in a wagon the next morning and leave with us calmly and quietly. That's the plan."

"Tomorrow noon," Wufei corrected. "We're telling them we'll leave the morning after tomorrow, but if we can go faster, we should. The King needs you, and the longer we stay put, the easier you are to assassinate and he is to snatch."

"It doesn't matter which one of us they assassinate or which one they snatch," I said. "Assassinate me, he's worthless. Assassinate him, I'm worthless. Snatch me, I'm worthless until I'm back with him. Snatch him, I'm worthless until I'm back with him."

Wufei grunted. "True. Just that they normally don't bother kidnapping Seers." Wufei cast a sidelong glance to the sleeping lump on my bed. "Seers have loyalty. Even if you got them with their Seerbound they wouldn't betray their King. Plus it's hard to kidnap a person who sees things one second before they happen. I've heard of that incident where you caught an arrow in mid-air."

That was not actually what happened. The people had glorified it in their retellings. I had actually reached out to catch the arrow, missed, and gotten shot in the forearm. However, it is important to note that I missed because I am a bad catch, not because I didn't see it coming.

I sighed. "It doesn't matter. Neither of us will get snatched or assassinated. We're going home. I just have to find a way to make this work. He just has to be better than Quatre. That's what we need. Better than Quatre at the absolute minimal."

The day progressed in a similar fashion to the morning. I tried to help him stand up, so as to walk him over to a chair. He kicked and flailed out out me sightlessly and I ended up having to forcefully grab him, haul him over my shoulder and deposit him down, after which he appeared very, very dizzy, put his head in his hands and simply sat quietly in the morning sun, as the doctor had prescribed.

We had more broth made for him. When I tried to spoon it into his mouth he burst out laughing. "Seriously?" he said, in hysterics. "I'd rather starve to death than spend a moment longer with _you_. I thought you would have gotten that after this morning. Clearly, you're a moron!"

I let him skip it, as he seemed to have much more energy now, not nearly as deathly sick as before.

The one thing he wouldn't part with, however, was Wufei's empty waterskin. "No," he said, when I tried to pry it from his hands, just to refill it. "I'll scream again," he threatened. In the end, he only parted with it because Relena donated hers to him as well, which let us create a swapping routine. He would only release the empty one if a full one was placed into his hands.

He refused to open his eyes, and the moment anyone spoke within hearing range he loudly threatened to yell, or came up with some sort of creative insult.

By lunchtime, we were all exhausted, I was emotionally drained, and my arm hurt from the morning's violence. He had kicked me in the side and that hurt too.

I knew I had to force-feed him. At least he was drinking, though, and drinking well. He loved water. I would have sworn he must have been part fish. While he wasn't drinking from whichever one of his bottles was full, he would be holding it close to him in his arms like a revered pet. I was envious of the darn things.

In the end we decided that the essence of surprise was the only way to do it. Wufei and I stalked up to his armchair in the sun, Wufei grabbed his wrists, and I put the broth - this time bottled for this task - to his lips, forced it in and waited. He screamed. He screamed and screamed and screamed. I was certain I was going to go deaf.

Eventually the screaming turned into crying and he tried to beg me to stop.

"Please, let me go," he said. "Just let me die," he begged me.

I started crying at that point. Wufei could see me, but my Little One still hadn't opened his eyes to look at me.

I have always prided myself on being strong. I held the bottle to his lips and refused to let him have his way.

By the time he grudgingly accepted any of it, it was nearly dinnertime, and his entire face was wet with tears, snot, and broth he'd tried to get out of his mouth. Once we'd forced a whole meal's worth into him, and we'd had to go through five bottles to do so, as he kept spitting it back out at me, we finally let him go.

He curled up into himself and sobbed. "I hate you," he said. "I hate you so much."

At the time, I did too.

He sobbed while the innkeeper and one of the men brought a tub into the room, to give him a better bath. He cried while it was filled. He didn't even fight me when I took off his trunks to put him in the bath. He just cried harder. I couldn't undo the knot he'd put in the tie, but it didn't matter, they ended up simply pulling off him easily enough. He kept crying when I wordlessly picked him up and placed him into the warm water.

The tub engulfed his miserable form, and it upset me.

I wondered for a moment how to get the top of his head wet when he solved that problem for me, though I wasn't grateful. He scooted himself to the foot of the tub, thrust himself backwards, slipped out of my grip and under the water. I yanked him up as fast as I could, and he coughed and spluttered crazily.

He'd inhaled under the water. He really, really wanted out. He was trying as hard as he possibly could to die.

After that, Wufei held him solidly by the arms while I washed and combed his hair as gently as I could. All the while he spoke mean things to us. He hated me, Wufei's mother was a whore, my breath smelled like the hole of a bitch, clearly I should get my face out of the dog's backside. The shampoo was bad, it smelled like piss, he would rather die filthy than have my hands in his hair. When Wufei suggested we should just cut it all off then he turned his face to him and screamed in his ear. I managed to keep my calm and put a hand over his mouth until he stopped. He bit it.

He never opened his eyes. I didn't know how he was doing it. Even as I thought about it, I _couldn't_ keep my eyes shut without unconsciously opening them. How was he keeping that up, all day?

Tired and exhausted, but clean, we wrestled him out of the tub. Wufei held him as still as possible while I toweled him off as best I could. We managed to get the robe onto him, and then put him into the bed, which had gotten fresh sheets at some point.

He crawled under the sheets, and with one final, "I hate you", he went to sleep again.

I collapsed in the armchair he'd been in.

WuFei shook his head. "I'll check on dinner," he whispered to me, and then left me alone with my exhaustion and my _monster_.

**A/N:** Sorry. It had to be done.


	12. Make him Not Hate Me part 2

**A/N:** If you're finding Duo's behavior a bit too awful to take, just keep at it. It does actually get better ... eventually. Though no one will see it coming ... *cackles*

If you're finding Duo's behavior hilarious, carry on. He only gets better from here. But he will get mighty confusing. You won't understand what's going on for a while.

In a few chapters, shit's going to get mighty, mighty confusing. I'm talking future-seeing, future-changing, timey-wimey-wibbly-wobbly type confusing. Just a heads up.

Also, shit's going to get R rated soon. Just a heads up.

**Heero**

Little One continued his behaviour without fail. He refused to look at me and would not stand the sound of my voice.

He memorized the sound of each of our footsteps, and gave us all hateful nicknames. Mine changed every time, each more disturbingly graphic than the last.

Wufei was "Ear rapist", Relena "The Bone Wench", the rest of our troupe an assortment of "Pus filled hernia", "Psychotic eyesore", "Dimple dong", "Son of a drunk hamster", and "Slack jawed daffodil".

Were I not attached to these people as friends or at the very least loyal staff, I would have found Little One's behaviour amusing. He struck me as the kind of man that could survive on the wrong end of a torture chamber, and end up driving his tormentor mad.

The only thing that ever quietened him down was pain, and that had such an extreme affect that I immediately resolved never to use physical punishment on him.

He hurt himself frequently with his thrashing and fighting. If he did it on purpose, in an attempt to lose his own life, he would carry on with the attempt but lose heart in it very quickly by comparison to his other, non-painful methods such as starvation. His attempts to whack his skull in on the headboard were quickly stifled, normally before I even reached him, by his curling up into a miserable ball and fighting tears and hiccups, cradling his head in his hands.

If he was hurt by accident by his own stupidity, fighting while still refusing to look at what he was hitting, he would get shocked, start hyperventilating, and become inconsolable for anywhere up to an hour. I of course couldn't even attempt to console him, as the sound of my voice would make him start screaming.

We began the trip on schedule, with Little One stuffed into a wagon with one of us watching him at all times. We tried to make ground as fast as we could, but we relied heavily on the security of towns at night.

I would have preferred to have camped quietly in a thicket, with a man on watch at all times, making us harder to track for any scouts from other kingdoms, looking for an easy jab at a Seer and his Bind, but Little One's tendency to scream loud enough for God to hear it made stealth a moot point.

Instead we opted for speed and keeping ourselves armed and ready for a fight or ambush at all times.

We had a few close misses, but typically only scouts, never any real conflicts. We did not bother to take prisoners. We sacrificed knowing who was sending them in order to maintain speed.

Little One's health took a turn for the worse early on, which was not unexpected. Given his refusal to do anything without a fight, he put undue stress on his body, which quite simply didn't take it well. He was exhausted, prone to shakes and bouts of weakness. We didn't know what other symptoms he may have had, as he refused to talk or listen. We only knew about the weakness because every now and then his punches would lose what little strength they had previously.

We only found out about the nausea when he began to hurl after eating. Shortly after that, fever and chills started. The first few nights I had slept nearby but not with him, not wanting to push the already fragile relationship. He took that decision out of my hands when he started throwing off the blankets at night. When I would wordlessly tuck him back in (which he fought, insisting he was not a child and could tuck himself in), he would throw them back off, muttering, "'rather freeze. Hear that's not a bad way to go."

After a few hours of this - he would wait till he thought I was asleep before trying again - I gave up and climbed onto the bed, on top of the blankets, and threw an arm and leg over his blanketed form to keep him from struggling and throwing them off. He did not take kindly to this.

After a few days, it became apparent that he couldn't keep warm regardless of blanket state, and I had to get in with him anyway. He took even less kindly to that, though when he would fall asleep, he would slowly relax into me, occasionally mumbling "Master", and seeking skin contact in his sleep.

It was in these times, while he was unconscious, that I understood how it was possible to love a monster. Quiet and cuddly, even occasionally smiling, Little One in his sleep was a pleasure to hold and cherish.

He had nightmares often. They were disabling before I started sharing his bed - every hour he would be in a cold sweat, whimpering and crying and mumbling feeble curses in his sleep. Regardless of this, Little One slept most of the time. His nightmares, though clearly terrible, did not stop him from simply throwing his hand over his eyes and going back to sleep. He could also fall asleep very fast, almost strangely. Relena saw him do it once, and told me it was a meditative trance sleep, something taught in the priesthood. He didn't have nightmares in the trance, but he could drop out of it and fall asleep properly, where he would have nightmares.

The first time I woke him from one, it was the middle of the night and too dark for either of us to really see each other. He was quite disoriented for a moment, then he realised where he was.

"Don't wake me up again. I'd rather be with _him_ than with _you_."

Once I shared his bed, he immediately became much less restless. I didn't wake him from nightmares, but I found that if I was affectionate to him, and talked to him quietly and soothingly, he would slowly ease out of the dream and back to sleep. I just had to be extra careful not to actually wake him up.

The worst thing that happened, however, was when I not only accidentally spoke to him, I used the term "Little One", which had officially stuck and become his go-to name.

His head snapped to me, his eyes squeezed shut, and he began to shake. I noticed I had surprised him. He came to swiftly, and seethed at me. "Don't ever call me that again," he said, calmly, through gritted teeth. But he couldn't seem to get the event out of his head. "Don't _ever_ call me that again."

He shook his head, slowly, as if trying to deny it had ever happened. "_Don't _ever_ call me that again!_"

He exploded very violently, and launched himself blindly off the bed toward me, throwing punches, scratching, swearing and cursing. He had to be physically restrained for an hour, and for the next day, if I so much as came near him, the same tantrum would start over.

There was nothing for it but to virtually gag myself, for fear of it happening again.

It was basically decided, the day that his fever peaked, that attempting to restrain or subdue him may take too high a toll on his health. He was well and truly past the point where a smack on the wrist was enough to teach him a lesson, and I hadn't bothered to give even one of those.

By the time Wufei lost his calm, and began hassling me over fixing Little One's behaviour, he had reached the point where another doctor proclaimed him too unwell for anything even remotely like punishment.

I was relieved. Little One had me completely in a corner - he was too sick for any kind of physical punishment, and there was nothing he wanted that l could take away from him. He certainly wouldn't obey, so rewards weren't going to happen. Even if he did, the only thing he wanted was water, I which I certainly didn't want to take away.

Little One behaved like a toddler in a tantrum, only with a substantially larger vocabulary. We ignored the jibes, the threats, and pretended we were not hurt by them. If we ignored him, he tended not to act out too much.

I kept as much distance as I could, having been advised that he clearly needed time to come to grips with me and his new situation, and that the very worst thing I could do would be to let him see how badly his behaviour was affecting me. I couldn't think too clearly, being stressed to the bone, and our sleeping arrangements didn't help at all with my insomnia. Every night I would lie next to him while he turned away from me and grumbled, either giving me complete, deafening silence or even worse angry insults.

I stopped being able to plan ahead, unable to think of any way I could make things better. His behaviour was already in the late stages of Binds - he wasn't going to get better, or at least, so the histories said. I didn't know whether to grit my teeth and try to fix it, which would probably not work anyway, or just give up.

I tried not to think about it. My main focus was to get home. There might be something in my books about magic that might help. I missed my bed and my friends. I even missed Quatre.

I just wanted things to go back to how they were before Little One, before I was a Lord, when I was just a very, very hard to catch street orphan with too much time on his hands and no commitments. I didn't want to think about anything anymore.

I just wanted everything to end, my problems to go away, leave me alone, and let me have a good night's sleep.

I just wanted him to love me.

**Heero**

_To my beloved friend and mentor, Trowa Barton_

_Please see attached report._

_I am alive and well, and eager to come home. It still startles me to recall that I ever wanted to leave when I was younger. As I have told everyone else, things with my Seerbound are not good, as expected. I look forward to being able to speak with you privately, to gain your advice on this matter in which you are far more experienced._

_We have dubbed him Little One, as he refuses to tell us his name, or speak in anything but insults. He is troublesome, loud, violent, and takes pleasure in every annoyance or harm he causes us. He is not kind to other people, as Quatre can be when he chooses. He rejects kindness and returns it with violence no matter who gave it._

_He has developed further illness, as we expected. The doctor we called for it agreed with the diagnosis of scurvy, and said this new illness is likely related to the cold of the cellar and his weakness. We are unable to maintain a fair food regime with him, because he will always refuse food and require force feeding, regardless of whether he feels sick or not, meaning that half the time we feed him he vomits. He won't chew, either, so we can only give him broth, which is certainly not helping with his weight._

_I considered myself prepared for this. I was wrong, and I'm sure you understand. There is no preparing for this. Perhaps I am better equipped, because I always knew he would dislike me, hate me even, but it is the vehemence, the illness, and the immediacy that caught me by surprise. It took Quatre years to reach this level of hate, and even he is capable of suppressing it. As my dearest, oldest friend, I feel I need your help to learn how to cope._

_I hope this message reaches you well. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be to do this task all on your own - especially because you know what your power used to be. I am also having trouble acclimatising to this. I am no longer living in the future - I am in the present constantly. I have not received any premonitions or jumps forward in time since Little One decided to fight me. I believe that the level of defiance he is showing is capable of keeping me permanently blind. I will need you to keep this completely secret, as I cannot imagine how he would abuse that knowledge should he find out._

_Faithfully,_

_Heero_


	13. Make Him Not Hate Me part 3

**A/N: **I've known from the start that this story was ridiculously unpredictable (that's what happens when you think up a story, then write it in the P.O.V. of someone who has no idea what's going on) but it amuses me how judging from the reviews, nobody's caught on yet to what's actually happening. Never fear, all will be explained ...

But it will not be explained before this gets R rated and shit gets confusing :)

Elle Writes: "little" is about to become "alot".

Snowdragonct: Writing this story has even made me feel bad about how mean I am to Heero. Halfway through this mission, I considered toning it down just to stop myself from feeling bad ... but that wouldn't have been in character for Duo. As for being grateful ... he might be grateful in the future ... might.

Zuzanny: Actually, Quatre probably would give useful advice on dealing with Duo. He is a tactical genius, after all. The only question is why he'd give advice - Duo's temper tantrums driving him crazy would be for giving advice, his hatred of Trowa against ... so I guess it would depend on how loudly Duo was yelling.

Pikeebo: If Heero left Duo alone, enough for Duo not to be considered in Heero's custody, then the dreams would start again. But Binds never admit to dreams, so Duo would likely fake ignorance of the dream when they got back together. Duo's not evil, he's just messed up and high on his own willpower.

Guest: They are baffled by Duo's behaviour, yes. But it gets even more baffling.

DkAdeena: I'm still not sure on how Duo and Quatre will interact (they don't meet for some time yet). But they are either going to get along like a house on fire, or hate each others guts.

Priscel: Calm, nice Duo blankets should be available for everyone. Specifically Heero. I don't know if calm is the right way to describe the Duo he's going to get though ...

CircleKV12: Quatre and Duo will either hate each other's guts, or get on like a house on fire. I haven't decided which yet. The other suspicions I can't answer, else I'll give away the entire story.

**Heero**

We arrived home, after a long week's travel, to my exhausted relief, just as the sun began to set. It had only taken us five days to get home, and it had taken that long due to Little One having to travel in a wagon. Our trip to find him had taken a full fifteen days, but most of that we had been travelling in the wrong direction, meaning that our trip home took much less time than our trip there.

After the past week of strain, all I wanted was to lie down on my bed, get my big white blanket out from the chest at the foot of it, throw myself down onto the bed and sleep with the canopy drawn, protecting me from everyone and everything.

But I knew that that was Little One's bed now too. At least, it would be until he no longer required me to sleep with him for heat.

I also knew that I was unlikely to be able to sleep. I never slept when I wanted to. The more I wanted it, the less I could get.

I also knew that before I could even get there, I would have to climb the stairs, and I would have to do it while carrying my little monster. He would kick, and scream, and cry and swear and seethe. I'd just have to deal with it, and make the climb regardless.

Little One did not like going up or down, one of his odd little traits. The first night I had carried him up the stairs of the inn to our room had frightened him, and since then, it had just gotten worse.

He liked going down even less. I attributed that to the fact that the last time he had gone down a floor prior to gaining this reaction was probably when Geordi had locked him in his cellar.

His reaction to any kind of ascent or descent made it necessary for us to tie him up before even trying to take him up the castle stairs. He didn't react kindly to that, so then we gagged him. That was good - it made him stop spitting at me. He had great aim for someone who refused to open his eyes.

I had considered trying to force his eyes open, many, many times, but I had never been quite certain of the reaction I would get to that. I knew that eventually it would happen - either via accident on his part or force on mine, but I didn't want to bring about another mega-tantrum like the one from when I had called him "Little One".

I also feared what would happen to me if the hope, the little nagging dream I had, were to be quashed.

I had an inkling, a little idea, a concept. I thought that perhaps it was all due to his eyes. He had stared at me in the cellar, and loved the eye contact. I thought that maybe, just perhaps, if the eye contact could be restored, he might come back to me. He might return to how he was then. I feared that it would destroy me if that didn't happen.

So, gagged and bound, I hoisted his squirming and muffled screaming self onto my back. I received countless stares of pity from our troupe, whom I had befriended most of, especially Relena, but I could accept no help from them. He was my burden to bear, I knew it, he knew it, and everyone else knew it. Shoving him off on someone else when he got too difficult, or when there were too many stairs, would be interpreted as a sign of weakness.

We had been greeted by a full mounted guard contingent at the city gates. Half of them dispersed at the stables, leading their own horses and one of the other's horses to the stables, leaving us with half a guard regiment dismounted at our service.

We were instructed that the King wanted to get the Bind to the tower as soon as possible, and I halfheartedly agreed. The other half simply didn't want to climb the stairs. The King would meet us halfway up, at the fourth and final floor of the castle, and I could rest from the ascent there before taking the internal circular stair of the tower.

Little One had attracted quite a crowd. Though I knew that there were archers stationed all around the walls, ready to take down a threat, it still made me nervous. I was still blind to the future.

We pushed through the crowd and into the castle.

Though he was bound and gagged, I could tell when his stress increased from the ascent. I was just glad we were going up, into a tower, and not down into a labyrinth dungeon like the Noin's kept their Seers. Though it was a good idea - the only way in or out was to know the future, and whether the turn you were taking was the one that would get you to your destination.

Little One began screaming in earnest at the second floor, when I was just beginning to feel the burn of the extra weight. By the third floor, screams alternated with whimpers, and I was panting and sweating. He had squirmed out of my grip and into the arms of someone waiting to catch him twice.

By the time we finally got to the fourth floor, and through the halls to meet with the King, he was in a right state, and I knew if not for the gag he would be projecting so loudly no one in the castle would hear for days.

Thankfully, there was a chair for me to deposit him in, but he wouldn't hold himself up, and I could tell he was wheezing. Instead I had to hold him steady, and couldn't bow to the King who waited for me.

Instead, Zechs simply strode right up to me and engulfed me in a hug. "Heero, welcome home," he said simply. "Pull him up a chair."

A chair was found, brought next to the one Little One was in, and I collapsed into it.

Little One stayed blessedly still, but clearly in trauma. He didn't even whimper at the King's voice, nor my own when I spoke. His breathing was ragged and sickly, but at the same time hyper fast.

"Thankyou, your majesty. You, everyone else, and my home itself has been sorely missed."

Trowa stood behind the King, in a position of watchfulness, one often adapted by Seers who used their eyes to see the future. He smiled, a terse but warm smile, knowing I had directed "everyone else" to include himself. He looked haggard and worn, more so than I had expected. Had something bad happened to him while I had been away?

"I've no doubt," Zechs said, his eye on Little One. "I've been sent reports - all of your dreams, how you found him. The last report I received last night, dated three days ago."

"That was when we stopped sending, your majesty," Wufei said. "Figured the couriers wouldn't get too far ahead of us."

"Has anything changed?"

"No," I said, taking a goblet offered by a servant and downing it in one gulp, thankful it was nothing but water, so as to wash the taste of bad ale from the inns out of my mouth. I offered it back to him before he left my side. "The situation is still the same. He won't stay quiet like this for long. It would be best for me to get him up to the tower and settle him."

"I feel I should warn you," Trowa said, and I knew from his tone that it was about Quatre. "Walker has told me he has heard Quatre promising that he will do everything he possibly can to ruin the two of you. He hasn't liked being stuck up there alone. I am hoping your return will mellow him out a bit, as he doesn't really dislike you, but while you were gone he has seemed to have forgotten that fact."

I quirked an exhausted, sweaty eyebrow and laughed. "Well, he's going to have nothing to do."

Trowa smirked dryly. "He hasn't been told how things are going. He is unaware that he is about to share a wall with a screamer."

"Good," Zechs said. "Perhaps sleep deprivation will set him straight. I'm a sparrow's cock away from having the brat tortured."

The King's crude language showed me precisely how bad things had been in my absence. Quatre must have gotten worse, if that were even possible. I sighed. Things were not going to change at all with me in my current state.

I glanced at Little One, who sat breathing heavily. If things didn't change for the better with him, then I was a blind Seer.

I was worthless.

A Seer that isn't Seeing is doing nothing but preventing the birth of a new Seer. Though it would be at least ten years down the track before the new one matured and was found, I would still be preventing his birth, and in return, granting my King nothing.

I knew very well what would be expected of me. It was in a small vial, highly deadly and painless, and I would be expected to drink it willingly, knowing I couldn't do my duty any other way but to step aside.

However, the current trend for Seers was to throw themselves from the railing of the green belt balcony atop the tower. I rather preferred that concept.

At least then Little One would get what he wanted. I would die in a hole - one made by the force of my body hitting the ground - and he'd probably be executed.

All he had to do would be to maintain what he had been doing flawlessly for the last week.

Trowa, uncharacteristically, said nothing about the threat to Quatre. He had stopped protecting him, even halfheartedly. That was new, and also very disheartening.

There may be two corpses beneath the tower before long. I pushed it from my mind.

"I should take him up," I said, standing. "By your leave?" I asked the king.

"Dismissed," Zechs said. "Trowa will attend to your duties while you tend to your new charge. Alert me as soon as you consider yourself fit for duty, and keep me posted on the situation."

"As you wish," I accepted. Before I could pick up Little One, the King had risen from his chair and put a hand on my shoulder.

"If there is anything you need, Heero. _Anything_," he said, looking at me in a way that seemed oddly familiar but also brand new. A way that seemed like something I should know, something innately human, but that I had never had. "You know where I live," Zechs said, smiling. "Even if it's just to talk."

"Thankyou," I said awkwardly, suddenly realizing what I had just been given. Platonic, fatherly affection. It was weird and uncomfortably new, but not unaccepted.

Wordlessly, I picked up Little One again. He didn't protest, but he froze in my grasp, unmoving and tense. He stayed that way through the halls, but the moment I took the first step up to the tower, the screaming started again. Before I took the second, it turned into crying.

His angry, hateful cries turned to pleas, despite the gag, I could make out the change of tone. He squirmed, trying to get away and to clutch me for comfort at the same time. I relocated him into my arms as opposed to over my shoulder. He cried and screamed and eventually got his bound hands up over my head and pulled himself into me, which actually made him easier to carry. It disheartened me nonetheless, as it proved that his fear and trauma over such a little thing as stairs had triumphed over his hatred of me.

He may well hate me, but enough fear of something else and he snapped like a twig. He was not as strong willed as I had hoped. Perhaps he really was a victim - beaten and battered and tortured.

Finally we reached the top. We passed by the guards at the door, who opened the trapdoor for us, and finally it was just myself, Wufei and Little One, sobbing uncontrollably into my neck, in the sitting room. Wufei jogged ahead and up the landing to my door to open it for us.

Quatre came out from his and Trowa's room and sat wordlessly on the stairs. Wufei completely ignored him.

I sent him a mournful look, nodding in greeting, and panted consolations to Little One. The last thing I needed was for Quatre to see that I had bound and gagged my Seerbound, something Trowa had never dared do to him, but it was done. He had seen.

Surprisingly, Quatre didn't make a sound or movement; he simply stared at Little One like he was some sort of weird apparition.

Quatre didn't understand emotions in other people, and a ball of emotion was all Little One ever seemed to be. When Trowa got angry with Quatre, Quatre would have absolutely no understanding of why. No amount of talking could make him understand that other people also had feelings.

I followed Wufei up into my room and placed Little One straight onto my bed, where he didn't even attempt to get under the covers. He lay atop them and sobbed, shuddering, into his bound hands.

I heard voices downstairs.

"Give me trouble, Winner, and I swear to God I will put you on the floor. You know Trowa won't stop it."

I recognized Otto from our usual guard. I hadn't seen him at the guard post beneath our sitting room.

I had never before heard Quatre openly threatened by anyone but Trowa himself. And the concept that Trowa had given up the task of defending Quatre, and punishing him personally, frightened me. Things had changed around here.

"Does he always cry like that?" I heard Quatre say. "I don't want to live with that."

"Deal with it," was Otto's callous reply, louder as he came closer. "Can't knock," Otto yelled up to us.

Wufei opened the trapdoor.

Otto handed him up a tray, popped his head up the door, saluted me and said, "Welcome home, sir."

"Thankyou. Dismissed."

He disappeared.

Wufei brought our dinner over wearily. "Want to skip it?" he said.

I shook my head. "He needs to eat after all that. And hopefully he won't be able to fight it for too long."

Wufei wrestled the still sobbing creature up, sitting behind him and grabbing his elbows to stop struggles. There were none. He fell back onto Wufei's chest.

I took the broth from the tray, brought it over, and sat with them on the bed. Little One turned his face away. I took off his gag and turned his face back, holding him by the chin. Then I brought a spoonful to his mouth. He wouldn't open it. Too easy.

Trying for a startle tactic, I quickly pinched his nose, to get him to open his mouth for air. It didn't go as planned.

I watched, horrified, as suddenly he gave a little lurch, his eyes un-squeezed, fluttered half open, then rolled into the back of his head and he fell completely lax onto Wufei's chest.

My first reaction was to swear, loudly. Wufei stared on in confusion as I released Little One's nose and tried to softly slap him back to breathing.

He slowly came to. This was the first time he had woken up with me directly in his sight, and he saw me.

All my little hopes, my tiny dreams that upon seeing me, the spell from Geordi's house would be recast and he would stare at me, lovingly, needily, and stay compliant in my arms were shattered.

He screamed.

It terrified me into action. This scream was such that I was struck completely unprepared, completely unaware. I tried to soothe him, I really did, but nothing worked. His eyes were wide as he stared at me, looking at my eyes, then my nose, mouth, hair. He took shaking breaths, clearly hyperventilating, and stared at me in _absolute terror_.

What shocked me wasn't the volume. He had been projecting this whole time. He had an extremely loud voice to begin with, and it had been trained to go louder. What shocked me wasn't the direction even. He could throw it, and frequently did, to creep us out I believe (and it worked).

What shocked me was that it was an actual scream. He was afraid. I had scared him. He was clearly shocked. None of his training was in his voice at that time. It wasn't rehearsed, it wasn't planned and premeditated. It was a reaction to shock and terror.

Little shocked moans escaped his gaping mouth as he looked around, behind me, at the bed, at the walls and ceiling, never looking at the same place for long.

I put the broth onto the table. "I'm sorry," I said immediately. "I am so, so sorry."

"Don't apologize," Wufei said. "That wasn't your fault."

At the sound of Wufei's voice, Little One arched off his chest, as if he had forgotten he was there, raised up his arms to attempt to push away from the person behind him, then realized they were bound, his feet were bound, and that Wufei had a grip on his upper arms, restraining him.

He whimpered, loudly, and stared back into my eyes with a soul-wrenching expression.

'_What have you done to me? What is happening to me? Why are you doing this to me?'_

Confused, afraid and lurching toward me and away from Wufei, I did the only thing I thought might secure his trust.

"Wufei, get out," I said, reaching to Little One's shoulders. "It's okay," I said softly. "No one will hurt you."

"You have to feed him else he'll learn to fake it, like what happened with the hair."

He referred to the incident where Little One had learned to yell "Ow!" loudly with even the gentlest stroke of the hairbrush in order to annoy me and prolong the time before we fed him.

Little One seemed to flinch and feel physical pain at the sound of Wufei's voice.

"_Go_," I said, demandingly. "That's an order."

He couldn't disobey an order. Not only did I outrank him, but it was paramount that I appeared dominant in front of Little One. Wufei grudgingly got up and left.

Little One watched him go with wide eyes, staring at him as if his very existence was deeply troubling. Then he turned those wide eyes onto me.

I inched closer. "I am so, so sorry. That was not supposed to happen. It never will happen ever again. I promise," I knew, even as I said it, that it was the wrong thing to say. Wufei was right, he would learn from this. If I ever so much as touched his nose he would know how to get out of a meal. Nevertheless, full of guilt and strain, I continued. "You don't have to eat now. It's okay. I'm sorry. Please don't be so scared."

Little One shakily nodded, looking away, I think trying to hide the fact that he was still scared. I attacked the binding on his hands, untying it with some difficulty. His struggling had tightened the knots. As I did, Little One gulped, set his jaw and forced his breaths even. I inched closer again, halfway there to giving him a hug. "I'm sorry," I repeated.

"I ..." Little One choked out, shaking his head. His voice seemed to have been chased away. He abandoned it and practically fell forward onto my shoulder, bringing his hands up into my shirt. He seemed to be composing himself there, his head burrowed into me, and I felt hopeful for a recovery for a moment before he burst into tears.

He cried into my shirt, and I let him. It was already sweat soaked, and mustn't have been the most pleasant thing for him to shove his face in, but he didn't complain. He cried the way I had expected, when I first found him, cold and alone and abused in the cellar.

I didn't shush him. If there was anything I had learned under Trowa and Zechs, it was that emotions must be followed, no matter what they are. If his emotions told him he needed to cry on my shoulder, then he ought to.

"It's okay to cry," I told him. "It's okay. Whatever you need. Don't rush it. You're safe."

He nodded his understanding into my shoulder through his sobs. We sat like that for a while, his legs still bound together at the feet, as he sobbed into my shoulder, as if my okay had opened up a tidal wave of pent up crying. He needed it. I didn't understand the urge to cry, not really being a crying type of person, but then again, I had never been locked in a cellar and probably raped before. As I understand it, that ought to make anyone cry. And that's not even including his current situation, which also wasn't very smile-inspiring.

After he was out of tears, and that took a long while, he simply sat clutching me for a while. He moved his face out of my shoulder, resting his chin there. I think he was looking around the room. I tried to stay soothing. The moment he had stopped crying, this had become a pleasant experience. I thought to myself, perhaps, just perhaps, the spell is back.

He sniffed, bringing me out of my thoughts.

"M...master?" he said. "Please ..."

Shocked at his tone, and his willingly calling me that, I didn't speak.

"Please," he said again. "I ... please, I need to ... to lie down ... I -"

"It's okay," I said, the moment I found my runaway vocal chords. "You don't have to beg. You _never_ have to beg."

I pulled the blanket down, then slowly eased him back onto the bed, taking great care to get his head centered on the pillows just right, his hair off his face.

"Are you okay?" I asked quietly, pulling the blanket over him.

He nodded after a moment. "Dizzy," he said.

I nodded, absentmindedly tucking him in while I fretted over his wellbeing.

"Please ..." he began, then seemed to remember my statement about begging. "Can I have my feet back?"

"Sorry," I said sheepishly, immediately moving to the rope about his feet.

"Thanks," he said feebly.

"Is there anything else?" I asked. "Anything?" I stressed anything, anything he wanted right then he could have had.

"Is my water gone?" he asked.

I immediately ran over to where the water pitcher lived on my table and poured him a glass, thankful that someone had filled it that day with fresh water, expecting my return.

I helped him up to drink it, and he drank the whole glass before lying back down. "I'll find you another canteen," I promised.

"'Kay," he mumbled, rolling onto his side and settling in.

Satisfied for the moment, I began rummaging through my things, to see if I had another bottle for him to take into bed, but I knew I didn't. It was with the rest of my travel things, still waiting with the horses to be brought up.

I knew Trowa would have one he would donate, but I feared braving Quatre.

I went back to Little One's side. "I'll be right back," I said, and he sleepily mumbled his assent. I moved for the trapdoor when I heard the sheets rustling.

"Wait! Wait!" he called.

I stopped in my tracks, turned around, and walked straight back.

He seemed stunned by this, as if he had expected me to ignore his request. He looked up at me with wide eyes. "Don't leave," he asked. Though it was a statement, worded as a demand even, he spoke it as if it were a request of great magnitude.

"Okay," I nodded. "I was going to get you another bottle, that's all."

He looked down, as if afraid to meet my eyes. "I ... I didn't hear you. Will you be coming back?"

"Straight away," I told him.

"Okay," he said, returning my gaze again, warily, as if he didn't believe me. "I'll ... wait here." He peered at me, his head cocked to the side, warily, as if the whole situation confused him and had him on edge. He didn't believe a word I had said.

"I'll be right back," I said again, and hurried to the trapdoor and out.

Quatre still sat on the stairs. I wondered if he had even moved.

Seeing me, he blinked a few times. "Does he always cry all the time?" he asked, completely heartlessly.

I took a deep breath, running my hand through my hair. "No," I said. "He's never done that before. He's normally much less vulnerable."

Quatre looked at me quizzically.

Quatre and I had always gotten along, but shakily, and only if I didn't press him over his relationship with Trowa. We understood each other. I was a creature of logic, and he was a manipulative, cold-hearted tactitian. One of the few things I believe he enjoyed about being here was versing me at chess. He enjoyed the fact that I could, depending on my Sight, see his moves coming. He said it made things interesting.

I knew Quatre didn't understand Little One's crying. Quatre found it nearly impossible to sympathize with anyone, unless I could explain it to him in cold hard logic, but even then, only if sympathizing was in his own interests.

"Little One was locked in a cellar, surrounded by wine when I found him," I told Quatre. "He was dying of thirst."

"I don't really care," Quatre said honestly, devoid of any emotion.

"I need to find him a canteen to fill with water that he can take to bed. That will help stop him from crying."

"The crying would be annoying if it continues," Quatre mused. "What happened to your one?"

"It's still with my tack on my horse."

"Hmm."

It became clear that Quatre hadn't put two and two together yet. Unfortunately, he was sitting on the stairs I would need to use to get into Trowa's room.

"Trowa has a bottle, I'm sure. He takes it with him on walks."

Light dawned on Quatre's face. "Oh, he does, yes." He narrowed his eyes at me. "And that will make him stop making that racket?"

"It will help."

"It will help," Quatre repeated, getting up. "Well, whatever helps me sleep at night."

Quatre disappeared into Trowa's room, and I hoped to God that he knew where Trowa kept it, because I sure didn't.

He did, and returned momentarily with it in hand. "Good luck with the crying," he said monotonously, handing it to me.

"Thankyou," I said. "I'm glad to see you're well."

"Hmm? Oh," he said. "Right, we haven't seen each other in a while. I forget about the awful pleasantries. I don't particularly care."

I nodded to him in farewell, but he wasn't looking. He hadn't changed a bit.

I quickly went back up the stairs to my room, looking straight over to the bed. Little One was in the exact same position as I left him, staring at the trapdoor waiting for me, as if he hadn't believed I would come back through. Ever.

I showed him the canteen in my hand, and he squinted at me, moving his head closer. I recalled his shortsightedness, and theorized that he could see me in a fuzzy outline at this distance, but not the canteen in my hand.

I moved straight to the water pitcher and filled it, letting the trickle of water tell him what it was. The concept of speaking to him still terrified me a little.

I returned to his bedside, and he lay back down. I moved the blanket aside and put the bottle in his hands, then tucked the blanket back around him.

"Thanks," he said.

"You're welcome," I said back. "You can rest. Just ... don't worry about a thing. You're safe here, I'll take care of everything. It'll be alright. Just rest."

Obediently, he closed his eyes.

I fell into my armchair, exhausted. I still felt guilty over the whole ordeal.

At least he was looking at me now.

_Primary Mission: in progress._


	14. Make Him Not Hate Me part 4

**A/N: **And chorus of reviews saying "WTF?" starts ... now.

Trowa's POV makes an appearance, and everyone's favourite Oz general shows up. He's not a major character, but I had to stick him in somewhere.

A lot of people have mentioned mental disorders, and I can neither confirm nor deny these theories ... spoilers.

By this stage Heero's just about ready to collapse ... He's had two weeks of high stress trying to find Duo, a week of dealing with him, and today he's had to carry him up eight flights of stairs (buns of steel. Steel, I say). He's not had a good month.

I've also realized that whenever I write Quatre, people seem to just love him. Maybe I should take that as a sign and write a Quatre-centric 3x4? But then I'd have to think up a setting. I've done too many medievals already ... What do you lot think: kitties, vampires, or just plain old smut? I could possibly be convinced to do all three in one ...

**Trowa**

"So," Zechs said, sipping whisky in his private sitting room, keeping company with General Treize while I watched over, pointlessly. There were few threats Treize couldn't take on, and those that he couldn't, I wouldn't see coming anyway. "Heero's back. Huzzah. Does this mean I get to tell the extra twelve guards to bugger off?"

Treize grunted. "That depends on the company you keep. And I said six guards when Heero left. It was _you_ who decided that I meant six guards per inactive seer and added another six when Trowa went blind."

I kept my mouth shut, having learned long ago that there was no good way to speak when Zechs and Treize got together. Besides, there was not much I could say to that. I hadn't Seen anything since I had threatened Quatre, and hadn't had the guts to confront him about it. Zechs was only keeping me around because the rest of the world didn't need to _know_ I was blind, and if I left his side anyone seeking to attack him would take it as an open invitation.

Zechs had an uncanny loyalty to Treize, unusual seeing as Zechs was King and Treize the General, and loyalty should have been the other way around.

"The company I keep?" Zechs said lowly, looking at Treize deviously from underneath long pale lashes. I hated it when the two of them got together. Zechs, with his white gold hair and sparkling blue eyes, only made me think of my Quatre at the best of times, and when he was with Treize, all sorts of sparks flew between them and I just got jealous.

"Any one member of Oz is worth twelve of your usual men," Treize said, clearly maintaining his usual personality of an egotistical narcissist. Ugh. I hated this. Those two always started flirting the moment Treize got up on his little pedestal he thought he lived on.

"And according to my last report from Torren, one member of Noin's Special's is worth four Oz men," Zechs jibed.

"Well ... Yes," Treize admitted grudgingly.

"And in a fair fight too," Zechs pushed him further.

"If you consider the fact that Noin's Special's are all dosed up on peppy seeds fair, then yes, fair. But at least none of my men are likely to ever die from a sudden shock, or bleed to death from a papercut," Treize snapped back, voice haughty but body language inviting.

"So you're saying one of your men couldn't even give one of the Specials a small cut to kill him in that tourney?"

"Do you have any idea how long it takes a man to bleed out from a papercut?" Treize snapped.

"If he's not dead within a week, he won't die from it at all," said a female voice, coming down the hall toward us, and I thanked the ghosts of old Andora that someone other than me had interrupted this awful display of banter. "He would have to be bleeding quite profusely, be unable to tourniquet the finger - assuming that is the location of the cut - and he would have to be bleeding out faster than the body can replace blood, which would be a feat from a cut so small. He'd also have to have some very thin blood - peppy seeds, you said? That would do it."

"Who the hell are you?" Treize asked. "And why would any woman know any of that?"

Zechs chuckled. "Miss Relena, General Treize Kushrenada."

"General?" Relena questioned. "Is that high up?"

Zechs chortled. "The highest," he said. "Treize, you'd love this girl. The first time I met her she told me I looked better with bed hair."

"She's got a point."

"And I do know you like your women a bit ... special."

"Don't talk about my wife that way," Treize said.

Zechs laughed. I shuddered. Lady Une was a truly disturbing character. This weird love triangle between my King, his general, and his general's wife was only made stranger when Treize had his somewhat psychopathic daughter around.

"Forgive me from interrupting, your majesty," Relena said. "But I spoke to master Howard, and he told me to bring this straight to you."

"Lord Howard, not master Howard," Zechs said.

Relena furrowed her brow, then muttered a long string of angry words under her breath. "I asked him which it was, and he said master, I shouldn't have believed the old shoe."

Zechs laughed.

"That's no way to treat a lady," Treize said, affronted.

"It's best to assume any woman from Amraki is not a woman, but an alien from a far away land," Relena told him. "I could probably take on a quarter of one of your Oz men. I imagine Lady Belle couldn't take one of their fingers, regardless of papercut status."

Treize couldn't help but smirk.

"It's about Lord Yuy's new Bind," Relena said. "He is definitely Amrakien, and most likely from one of the abbeys. There may be a diplomatic issue involved here."

Treize laughed. "You know that if Amraki wants to take Yuy's Bind back, it's me and my army they talk to, not the King, right?"

Zechs furrowed his brow. "I would not have said it in such a manner," he said slowly. "But if wherever he's from wants him back, that's not going to happen."

Relena smiled perfectly. "I know that, you know that. But try to remember, Amraki is isolated. Although they are under your rule, they haven't had your army on their lands for decades, they haven't called for your aid in longer, most of them wouldn't know a Seer if one hit them in the face with a time-travelling fish, and they certainly don't remember the last time they had to give up one of their own for the valiant and noble cause of 'magic', something that hasn't been to Amraki since old Andoran times."

Zechs sighed. "You're my Amraki diplomat, aren't you?" he said. "Why can't you deal with it?"

Relena grit her teeth. "When news gets to Amraki that we have someone most likely of their priesthood, which will not take long, as his screaming is very recognisable, I'm going to get a letter from any abbey who thinks he's one of theirs. It's likely that they are going to demand his release into my custody, and then that I bring him home. I can't do this - and I don't want to. I understand that we need him here. If I try to explain that to them, they will call for me to be replaced, and likely I will be called home, where I will be treated as a heretic for aiding in the prison of a priest."

"Well, isn't this a grand situation," Treize drawled.

"When this gets bad, I will need to step down, to save my own reputation. My replacement will not be so easy to convince. The only reason I haven't immediately called for Little One's return to Amraki is because I've been here long enough to understand the situation. A fresh Amrakien will not."

"What are you asking me to do?" Zechs asked.

"Nothing, at this point. It depends a lot on which abbey he is from. They all behave differently. If we are very lucky, he is from Nova, and exiled. Only Nova ever does that. The rest commit suicide if shamed. If he is a Nova exile, Nova won't care about him. But if he's from anywhere else, there will either be a call for his execution - if he is disgraced - or a call for his return. Until we know where he is from, I cannot give any recommendations. All I can say is that there is going to be trouble."

"Will they become violent?" Treize asked, ever the General, vigilant for war.

Relena shrugged with one shoulder. "It is unlikely. They are more likely to show their anger through economic means. The only abbey likely to retaliate with force is Sarsha, and even then, the army wouldn't help - Amraki is too small to attack us, only attempt to get their priest back - and Sarshan monks, extraordinary as they are, would not be able to remove Little One from here."

"Economic means?" I questioned.

"Amraki supplies half of the Kingdom's medications, and _all_ of our higher-grade cooking spices. If you find you've got a Perc priest, then fairly soon you will notice that _all_ your apothecaries have no medications left to give you."

"But will I still have saffron?" Zechs asked.

Relena smiled. "It's possible. The ties between abbeys are more like a spider's web than anything else. If Perc called for aid from the rest, Sarshan would reply, but Nova wouldn't. It's impossible to know what the situation will be until I know which abbey he is from, only that there will be a situation."

Zechs sighed. "This is ridiculous."

I spoke up. "I hate to point out the obvious here, but whichever abbey he's from are the ones who lost him in the first place. We didn't _take_ him from an Amraki abbey, we _rescued_ him from a drunk's cellar. I don't think that any abbey that loses their priests deserves him."

Relena took that quite well. "I'm also interested in that. No abbey just gives up a priest, and you can't just leave the priesthood. If they kick a priest out, they have to take a suicide ritual, unless they're from Nova, but even then, exiled Novan's almost always go to another abbey. Amraki doesn't just lose priests."

"How likely is it that he _isn't_ a priest, then?" I asked.

"Not. He has the voice and the hair for it. He's been voice trained - and you don't get to be that good at it for several years. He's from an abbey that does voice training, and that's about half of them. He's also got some talent at meditation and knows the art of muscle-pulling - where you can make your body fight instinct reaction. He doesn't open his eyes, even when shocked, and he sleeps in a meditative trance sometimes. And those talents are only what I've observed. It's likely he knows many more, and the only place he could have learned this skillset is an abbey."

"Does Perc teach all of those skills? I want to rule out losing medications," Zechs said, switching to diplomatic talk.

"Perc does, but they're also the farthest abbey away from any of the involved borders. For Little One to have gotten out of Amraki from Perc, he would have had to go past four other abbeys. It's unlikely that anyone would have allowed a priest out of Amraki borders. He could have slipped out, if he was running away, but from Perc, he would have had to run more than a day's travel. Amraki is small but densely populated. Someone would have seen him and hauled him back."

"Can you write me a list of all the abbeys and what they might do if angry?" Zechs asked.

"Of course."

"And one of their relationships with each other, to know who will help who."

"Much more difficult. There are about fifty abbeys, and they're all closely connected and hold very complex relationships. I don't get up to date reports on their little squabbles. No one does. Normally you don't know Perc is mad until people start dying."

Zechs sighed.

But I furrowed my brow. "Dying?" I asked. I had a feeling that that was important. A gut feeling. I hated gut feelings. What with Quatre's disobedience, half the time my gut feelings were wrong, and since our little fight where I'd threatened to put my tongue down his throat, I hadn't had any gut feelings at all.

Unless I counted the sickening, twisting, churning feeling of guilt and remorse over words said in anger.

"Oh, it only happened once. And they didn't know it would scale into such proportions. The smallest abbey, and oldest, Perc got mad at them, over a mishandled book I think, and next thing you know, people started dying, because they didn't get medication."

"What would happen if he's from there?" I asked, mostly just in case my gut was right, and I didn't just have indigestion.

"Well ..." she said, thinking, "We'd probably all die. Cheers."

With that comment, she left us, while Zechs and Treize laughed off her light hearted comment.

She hadn't meant it seriously. Had she?

**Heero**

Little One slept peacefully without me having to intervene to try to chase away a nightmare. He looked the most comfortable I had ever seen him, and that brought on a disturbing thought.

He liked my bed.

He cuddled down into the mattress and pillows, even pressing his face into the covers in his sleep. He seemed very content. He moved a lot, but none of it was stressful, no tossing and turning, just shifting position, smirks and unintelligible mumbles in his sleep. I stopped bothering to check on him after every rustle of sheets. The sight of him _happy_ in my bed was too much to take. It was too much of a change. He'd gone from stressed, angry, and unable to sleep without tossing, into someone that made sleeping look easy. I envied him, and couldn't bear to watch it.

It was because of this that I missed his slow gravitation toward getting out of the blanket, and when I next peeked at him, he was completely out of it.

It had still been warm when I had left the castle, in the early autumn months. I had left with my summer blanket on the bed, a soft, blue thing that wouldn't provide adequate heat come nightfall, but was plenty in the heat of day.

He hadn't thrown it off himself, as he had been prone to do previously. Rather he had slowly clutched at it until the whole thing was bundled up in a cuddle in his arms, one leg swung over it, and he was out in the cold.

I sighed. I didn't want to wake him, but I could see goosebumps on his skin. This wouldn't do.

I crept toward him, and tried to pry the blanket out from his sleeping death grip. His response to the movement was to tighten his arms and nuzzle it.

I pulled a side out from his grip and pushed it over his shoulder, but he sleepily swiped my hand away.

" 's mine," he muttered possessively. "Go 'way."

"You're cold," I whispered.

He moaned, still almost completely asleep.

"Can I jus' have the white one?"

I froze, the question stunning the life out of me. "_What?_"

He didn't wake up, despite my confused tone.

"... the white one ... in the chest."

I had already known what white one he had been referring to, and where it was kept.

How did he know?

He had never been in this room before today. He had never _seen_ my white blanket. No one had spoken to him about my white blanket. How did he know?

Nevertheless, I went to the chest and got the heavier white blanket out. I went to throw it over him, then second guessed it, worried he would wake up and get mad at me for it.

"Here," I said, and placed it on the bed beside him.

He didn't move.

"Little O - " I snapped a hand over my mouth, biting my lip.

He snapped awake, raising his head to look at me.

I let him see me there, eyes wide, hand over my mouth, before I slowly took my hand away. "I'm sorry," I said quietly. He blinked at me. "I know you don't like that, I'm sorry, it's just that the name stuck. I'm sorry."

He blinked again, then let his head fall back onto the pillow. " 'm cold," he said. "Will you tuck me in?"

I picked the blanket up and shook it out over him, allowing it to fall over his form. I began tucking it in around his feet, moving up. "I thought you didn't like this," I said, quietly. Part of me was stunned into total obedience. Another part was terrified to speak. And the rest was too confused to bother thinking too hard about it.

"I want to be coddled," he said, closing his eyes. "What were you apologising for?"

"I accidentally called you ... that name you don't like," I said, after briefly considering lying to him.

"What name?" he asked, stifling a yawn with his hand, then grasping the blue blanket again.

I reached his chest, tucking the blanket in and folding the top away from his face.

"You know. Little One," I choked on the words, fearing immediate repercussions.

Instead he just furrowed his brow, as if he was confused.

"Nah," he muttered eventually. "Yer doin' it wrong."

The confused part of me took over. Everything he had said to me since he passed out had resulted in an internal '_What?!_', and this was no different.

"You have no idea how to tuck a person into bed, do you?" he asked me, one eyebrow raised.

He kept changing the conversation on me. I was off balance, confused, slightly creeped out, and had no idea what exactly I was supposed to be doing. "Show me then," I said.

He pulled his arms up out of the blanket. "This," he said, grabbing the top of the blanket, "goes all the way up here." He pulled it up over his nose, so that his sleepy eyes and forehead were all that could be seen. "Then you push the hair out of my face and kiss me on the forehead."

Out of sorts and caught by surprise, but not even slightly bothered by the turn of events, I obediently grasped the top of the blanket, tucked it in around his shoulders, then chased away a few wisps of hair from his forehead, and leaned in to place a chaste kiss there.

"Then you say to me, 'Goodnight, Little One,'."

I leaned back to say it. "Goodnight -"

"No, nonono. Get back in there and say it."

I leaned back in and kissed him on the forehead again. "Goodnight, Little One," I said, my lips still close enough to brush his skin with every syllable.

He hummed in approval, his eyes having closed during the kiss. "Much better," he said. "G'night."

I could only assume that he now liked the name, but the whole encounter, pleasant as it had been, had only served to hide the bigger issue.

Wufei was right. My Little One was a Seer.

My white blanket was proof of it.


	15. Make Him Not Hate Me part 5

**A/N: **In which Heero's control snaps. A little worried I didn't pull this off right, but here goes anyway.

Taerantula: Thanks for catching that slip. I had forgotten that I had named the three leaders - and Treize was one of them. I'm going to go back and un-name him. I didn't really methodically plan this one out :P

Priscel: I agree, poor Trowa. This whole story is a Trowa sob-story. By the way, that 'one little lie' is going to bite Heero in the ass. And now you're going to be on edge just waiting for it to happen. Muahahah.

* * *

**Heero**

I decided that the best course of action about Little One's uncanny knowledge about blankets was no action at all. Sooner or later, he would admit it, or everyone else would figure out what he was for themselves. Seer or not, Little One wasn't going anywhere.

To take my mind off it, I took a quick, cold bath, in the tub kept in my room, then shaved over the lavatory basin, staring at myself in the mirror. I was haggard and worried. I tried to compose myself. The only way to survive this was to pretend it wasn't happening.

Wufei hadn't told me all the details about what had happened to the Seer with another Seer as their Bind, but I could put two and two together. If someone had grabbed me, forced me into a tower and told me to submit to them, then I had a dream, fell in love instantly and powerfully ... I wouldn't be easy to contain. There would be no peace.

Little One would, eventually, fall in love with someone else - someone who was bound to hate him no less - and cease to See. In the meantime, his Sight would be gaining power, probably better than mine, and he could already cut my Sight off completely just by misbehaving.

This - us - wasn't going to last long. The best case, the only way this could work would be if we could find his Seerbound, when he got one, and keep them hostage, forcing him to behave. But he would know, and he wouldn't tell us where they were, unless the same thing happened to him as had happened to me, where the Seerbound told him they were dying and needed help, but the likelihood of that happening twice was miniscule. If we didn't find a way to make this work, I would have to step down. Essentially, with all of his screaming, and now this possibility of being a Seer, Little One had wrested all the control of the situation away from me. Unless I started Seeing, and he stopped, or he got a Bind I could use to manipulate him, then I needed to step down. Unfortunately, all of those things were extremely unlikely, and the only way to step down was to step _off_ a high surface. Or _onto_ a sword.

The only way to cope with events was to pretend they weren't happening. I had to do something I had never before practiced - I had to live in the now.

Now, specifically, was when Little One's nightly bath was due. A nice hot one for him in my nice big tub, hot water specially brought up to my rooms for him. The bath I had been in just before was emptied and hot water dumped in it for him.

I spoke in hushed tones to Wufei, who normally helped me with this task.

"I don't think you should be here now," I said, trying my hardest not to sound offensive. "He had a bad reaction to you earlier, and he needs to get used to me alone. I have to be able to control him without your help."

Wufei sighed. "I know," he said quietly. "I should have stressed that earlier, it's just ..." he trailed off.

"What?" I asked, now worried. Did he know? If Wufei knew for certain Little One was a Seer, there would be problems. Alerting the King type problems. And then a whole lot of attention would be paid to the issue, I would get a whole lot more stress, and I just wanted to sleep, and figure out what that goodnight kiss had been about.

Wufei shook his head. "Guilt," he muttered angrily. "Remember, 'I heard you and I thought it might be okay to live with you, but then you walked right over me'?" he quoted Little One. "_I_ walked right over him. Imagine how much different this might be if I hadn't."

Relief flooded through me like a tidal wave. "You mustn't blame yourself," I said. "Things _wouldn't_ be any different. He's a Seerbound. This is how things are," I said, trying to be reassuring, but I ended up just depressing myself.

This is how things are. Violence and screaming and hate.

What the hell had happened earlier with my blanket and goodnight kiss? Where was the expected violence and screaming and hate?

Wufei patted me on the shoulder awkwardly and left, and with him went the servants who had brought Little One's water. I took a deep breath, and went to confront what had been my little monster before the previously mentioned goodnight kiss.

Now he was just damn confusing.

I knelt by the bed, reaching out to shake his shoulder to wake him up. He popped one eye open, peered at me, and whispered, "Are all the people gone?"

I nodded numbly. "Gone," I agreed.

"I heard noises," he whispered. "Was there a small waterfall in here?"

I chuckled. "They were pouring you a bath," I said, then furrowed my brow, reconsidering the entire notion. _Fuck it,_ I thought. "You can skip it though, if you want." If he wanted to sleep calmly and quietly in my bed, I wasn't going to risk that by enforcing a bath he didn't really need.

He peered at me again. "How many people will see me naked if I have it?" he whispered.

"Just me," I whispered back. "And I'll avert my eyes. Why are we whispering?"

He smirked, then it transformed into an open grin, then a breathy laugh. "I wanted to see if I could make you start whispering for no reason."

I laughed, confusion back at maximum, but ignored for now. Live in the now. Living in the now was quite easy with Little One in his current mood. Little One grinned. "I'd like a bath," he said at normal volume. "I want you to wash my hair."

He got himself up and out of the covers, and continued to surprise me by reaching for my hand to help him stand up. I did, and then he leaned on me, in what I thought for a blind moment of pure hope was going to be a hug.

"I'm a bit dizzy," he growled. "Stupid body and it's stupid dizziness. I feel like such a girl."

"You're not a girl," I said, moving to support him as we began walking to the tub.

He knew where it was. He was mostly blind, couldn't see a foot in front of him, but he knew where it was. I excused it - he'd heard the water sloshing into it. That had to be it.

It didn't explain how he navigated around my desk to get there.

I pushed it from my mind, focusing on the now. And the now was ...

Little One stripping.

"You're gonna have to stop holding onto me as if you think I'm gonna evaporate," Little One said. "I need to get my shirt off, and you've got a death grip of doom."

I hastily released my grip. He removed his shirt, and I steadied him.

"It's ok," he said. "The dizziness passes if I just brute force my way out of it. I'm not going to fall over and shatter into a billion pieces."

He was smirking at me, and I realized I must have been wearing my concern on my face. I swallowed nervously. "Sorry," I said.

He sniggered at me, but there was no real mockery to it. He was making fun of me - but that was all it was. Fun.

I couldn't understand it. I couldn't wrap my mind around it. So I didn't. Live in the now. I might as well live in the now, as I couldn't see the future anymore.

I steadied him, even as he sighed in mock exasperation, as he stepped out of his pants and into the tub.

"Ooooh," he said, one foot in. "Water's hot here."

Inns didn't have the resources of the castle. As I helped him into the water, he moaned throatily, causing all sorts of unwelcome reactions in my pants.

I hoped he didn't notice, and knelt by him, keeping my steadying hand on his arm - just in case he reverted to previous behaviours and tried to drown himself. He glanced to my hand, but didn't say anything as he rested back into the tub.

He was surprisingly pliant while I washed his back. He took the soap from me and began absentmindedly washing himself, though he didn't attempt to make me stop my work on his back. I did the whole thing one handed, holding him by the arm.

Eventually, he smirked lazily at me, musing: "I'm interested to see how you're going to wash my hair with one arm."

I shook my head. "It's going to be difficult," I agreed.

He chuckled throatily. There wasn't much I wouldn't give to be able to hear that, often, for the rest of my life.

"Extend some trust," he said seriously. "You'll find it most rewarding."

I patted his arm fondly before letting go, trying to let him know exactly how much I wanted that statement to be true.

He took a deep breath, pinched his nose, squeezed his eyes shut and slowly lay back into the water, running a hand through his hair while under, then pulled himself back up, hair and face now drenched.

"Towel?" He asked, his eyes still squeezed shut.

I gave him a hand towel and he scrubbed his eyes and face dry, clearly not amused with the soapy water in his eyes. I guided him to rest back and he pliantly obeyed, watching me get out some hair supplies Relena had recommended. I hadn't really had the opportunity to use them, what with bath time having been more like war time than anything else.

"What's all that?" he asked, squinting at the conglomeration of bottles.

"I don't really know," I confessed. "A friend gave them to me for you."

At his blank look, I realised he couldn't really tell what they were, so I brought the whole container closer to him. "For your hair," I clarified.

His eyes lit up, and he turned over to me, staring at everything. "Mother of a pearl necklace," he said in awe.

I had begun to wonder whether he just strung together random words to make his expressions and insults, or whether one day they would all be explained to me and make perfect sense.

"They got labels and everything!"

"Can you read?" I asked, hopeful.

"About as well as a bear wearing a helmet composed entirely of flowers," he said. I presumed that meant 'No.'

"What do they all say?"

I read them out to him, and the words all seemed to make sense to him. Once upon a time, I presumed when he had been in Amraki learning to project and throw his voice, he had access to proper hair care.

Once done, he nodded, and pointed to a bottle. "This one first, rinse it, then this one, let it sit for a few minutes, rinse it, then use this one, sparingly, and then use this on the ends, and don't rinse it out."

As I took out the ones we would need, and left the rest, he settled back in the tub.

"That is, if you're not in a hurry," he amended.

I restrained a laugh. "No rush," I told him. I wouldn't have cared if there was an army at the door. I fully intended to sit there and wash his hair.

"Thanks," he mumbled sheepishly.

"You're welcome," I said.

I started to question it again, wondering when exactly we had progressed into exchanging pleasantries and washing hair, but I forced myself to stop. '_Don't question it_,' I told myself. '_Live in the now_.' So I busied myself with my hands in his hair.

It wasn't dirty, not really. We'd gotten most of the cellar muck (among other things) out of it in his first bath. The worst of it was the sweaty grease at the roots, from when he had been freaking out at the stairs. Regardless, I scrubbed it into his scalp and all down the impressive length of his hair, as if it was filthy.

He hummed appreciatingly, nearly stunning me out of my reverie. '_Don't question it_,' I reminded myself.

We rinsed it the same way he had wet his hair to begin with, and as he dried his face and eyes I began washing with the next thing. He sighed again and simply sat there as I massaged his scalp. "Let it set," he said after a minute, and lay back against the tub, staring up at the ceiling.

I nodded and dried off my hands. We sat in a strangely comfortable silence, as he stared up at the rafters he surely couldn't see, his eyes moving constantly.

I looked up at my roof, wondering what he was looking at. It was a circular room, divided between myself and Trowa down the middle by a simple wood wall. The roof was a cone, as suited a tower. Our rooms were an interesting sort - before the Seers had been moved up here, it had been the nursery, where all the children grew until they were old enough to be safe in the castle. Far easier to protect children when there was only one entry and one exit.

As a result, the whole place was vibrantly coloured, though the colours were well and truly fading now. The ceiling was painted a deep, dark blue, peeling horribly from age, the balcony a bright, happy green. My floor was a bright red stained mahogany.

Little One stared up, moving his eyes to and fro almost frantically, squinting, but his face was a picture of relaxation, although slightly sad now, as if he'd just realised something he didn't like.

Eventually he sighed. "Someone ought to paint stars on the ceiling," he said, resigned.

I glanced back at the roof. I theorised he couldn't see well - couldn't see the fraying paint, the rafters, anything. Perhaps it was all just a big blue blur up there.

I nodded though. It was the right shade of blue for a night sky mural. I thought about it, wondering if perhaps I could use the roof to my advantage. It was the first thing he had ever claimed an interest in, other than death, and if I could offer it to him, perhaps I might get something in return.

"When I can trust you, and you're well enough to go up a ladder and not fall, you can paint the ceiling," I offered.

He whipped his head around, lightning fast, and stared at me with wide eyes. "Really?" he asked, as if I'd offered him the world on a silver platter.

"When - if - I can trust you not to do anything I won't like, and you're well enough," I said. "Not before."

He smiled at me, brightly, before resting his head back. "Okay," he said, staring back up, but I saw for a moment a dark expression, a grimace. He was pleased I'd offered him that, as he hadn't expected me to, but he didn't believe I was telling the truth. He banished the grimace with a bright smile, leading me to think that he had _wanted_ me to lie about it. Whatever had just transpired, he thought I was a liar, he thought he would never get stars up there even if he behaved and got better, and yet he was still _happy_ with me about it.

I kept my mouth closed to keep heavy questions in. The strategy had done me well so far.

A few minutes more passed, and I nudged him to get up to rinse his hair out, then started with the other conditioner. "Why do we not rinse this?" I asked him, to keep a conversation.

"It's got rijka in it," he said. "It's a leaf from up north. If you let it set, it will create a coating and stop the elements from damaging the hair. And it's got scian. That'll sink in and make it repair itself. My hair's got some serious neglect damage happening. Your friend knows their stuff, and isn't cheap. Scian's more expensive than a set of Alfrescan twins. "

"Alfrescan twins?" I queried.

"Alfresca. You know, the place with all the brown people."

"I know where it is. I thought they didn't like being called brown."

"I don't like being called shortie, but truth is truth."

"Why are Alfrescan twins expensive?" I asked.

He looked back at me and cocked an eyebrow. "Two and two together, my friend. It makes four. Why do _you_ think Alfrescan twins are expensive?"

I paused, confused after being called 'friend', then let the pleasant feeling it gave take over the confusion. "Two Alfrescan's cost more than one?" I guessed.

He laughed. "Twins. _Twins_. What do women have two of, and what do Alfrescan women have that is gargantuan in scale?"

I paused.

"You like girls," I said, trying to keep my horror out of my voice.

He furrowed his brow, as if my statement made no sense. "I like them best when they're making me dinner," he said jovially, grinning. "Don't you like girls?"

"I like girls. Just not ... exclusively."

He furrowed his brow again, and then looked at me, smirking. "My like, or dislike, of girls has no effect on the economy and the price of twins," he reminded me.

"So that was just a statement?" I asked.

"You read a lot into that, didn't you?" he said, exasperated. "What's your problem with me mentioning breasts?"

I stayed quiet for a moment.

He shook his head, laughing under his breath. "Were you hoping I'd be more interested in your chest than that of a girls?"

My silence gave me away, and he laughed again. "Don't be that way. I'm Amrakien," he said, putting stress on it. He was clearly proud of his Amraki upbringing. "Amrakiens don't believe in sexuality."

I wasn't aware of that. "You don't like men _or _women?" I asked.

He snorted. "I don't believe gender has anything to do with lust or love or whatever you want to call it," he clarified. "I'll lust after whoever's chest I like, whether it wobbles because it's a girl's, or because it's disturbingly overweight, or if it doesn't wobble at all. Why would anyone ever want to restrict themselves to one thing or another? Seems to me like you're just cutting off all of your options."

I chuckled. His manner was amusing, and easy to get along with. "Do you frequently lust after chests that don't wobble?" I asked.

He was silent for a moment, smirking again. "You'll just have to find out, won't you?"

I sighed, shaking my head, bemused. I massaged the final conditioner into the tips of his hair. He had a smirk on his face the whole time, as if pleased with himself and plotting something. It didn't seem malignant, so I let it pass.

He held out his arm for me to help him up out of the bath, and I did, making certain he didn't slip. I helped him into a towel which seemed to engulf him.

He looked down at his feet while I dried him off, almost shyly, but still with that little devious, plotting smirk. He lifted his feet complacently for me to dry his soles, and then sat on the side of the tub while I dried off his hair as best I could. I'd long ago learned that his hair was undryable. There was just too much of it, and not enough towel.

Finally, we got up and went back to the bed, where I found my dresser. He crawled onto the unmade bed, resting the towel on his lap.

"Here," I said. "You can wear this." I handed him a nightshirt.

"I really don't want to," he said matter-of-factly, timid as you please.

I fished out a pair of drawstring pants for him. I understood the desire to sleep without a shirt on, and I was far from averse to the prospect.

My Little One shook his head, giving me a devious little shy smile. My heart skipped a beat.

"I really don't want those either," he said, looking up at me. He picked the towel up off his lap, and I averted my eyes in a gentlemanly fashion. Out of my peripheral vision I saw him draw his knees up to his chest and slide his legs under the covers, settling himself down, completely nude and still a bit wet in my bed.

I was certain I was hallucinating. Not five hours ago, he had hated me. Now he wanted to be naked in my bed.

When I dared to look back at him, it was even worse than I had thought. He was not only naked, a little bit wet, and in my bed, but he was also lying in the most wanton position I had ever seen.

I am a man who has saved the lives of whores and chambermaids and noblewomen alike. I have seen some very wanton things.

As my Little One lay in my bed, wriggling against my sheets to get comfortable, and making me envious of the linens of all things, he bit his lip in the most adorable fashion whilst grinning up at me. His hands lay splayed limply beside his head on the pillow, as if begging me to hold them, while I kissed that bitten bottom lip of his and gave him something other than linens to wriggle into.

He closed his eyes and sighed a bit, then reopened them, looking at me in the most adorably lusty fashion. He slid a hand over to the free side of the bed and patted under the covers.

"There's a spot here for you," he said sweetly. "And your not-so-wobbly chest."

I truly did not know how to deal with that request. After bracing myself for so long, expecting another Quatre, and then having to deal with Little One's screaming and hate, he now wanted me to climb into bed with him while he was completely naked, a little bit wet, and obviously not quite himself. Before I had come up with a plan on how to deal with this, however, my traitorous self had already gone to the other side of the bed and crawled in.

The words, '_He's going to hate you in the morning,' _popped into my mind and it occurred to me that my mind was quite capable of understatement.

As I lay on the other side of the bed, trying desperately to dissuade the torrent of arousal I was already feeling, he did the most unhelpful thing ever, and sidled up as close to me as possible.

He was still warm from his hot bath, and his cheeks were a pleasant rosy pink as he smiled at me, bringing his whole body right up close to mine.

"I've been thinking," he said, and I knew, I just knew, that whatever was about to come out of his mouth would be diabolical in nature.

He placed one of his hands on my shoulder and trailed it down, mumbling, "Now where's that hand of yours?", until he reached my wrist. Upon finding my hand, he grabbed it and brought it slowly across his waist, until he was satisfied that I was holding him close enough. Then he tilted his face right up close to mine, giving me a mischievous grin.

"I've been thinking," he said again, lower this time, "I want to know," he continued, and his lips were right next to mine, sharing my breath, in my air, moving ever so close, just nearly touching, nearly kissing me, which was the only thing I wanted to do at that moment. "I've wanted to know, what it is, you see," his breath was a little bit shallow, a little bit needy, and if I kidded myself enough I could almost believe that I felt his hardness against my thigh.

"What it is, what they are, actually .. " he continued breathlessly, his words composed mostly of breath now, his eyes on mine in that weird way of his where he would never keep them still, always looking at different places, constantly moving.

"What they are, the ten things, the big ten things, that you would like to do to me."

Yes. Diabolical. He had me completely screwed.

And of course, at the time, what with the proximity of his lips to mine and the fact that he was naked, the only things I could think of were 'Kiss you and make love to you', and I considered myself lucky that I was thinking those things in such respectful and kind grammar.

It completely surprised me when I managed to clear my throat and mutter, "Hold you," and the husky neediness of my voice nearly scared me. I swallowed nervously. That was one. Nine more completely non-sexual things I had to come up with so as not to turn this into something he would hate me for.

"One," he said, moving a little bit closer to me.

Oh dear God. He was hard. I wasn't imagining that.

"Um," I stalled.

"Quick," he said, "The next nine things that pop into your head."

And of course the next thing that popped into my head was how I wanted to dive under the covers and wrap my mouth around the organ pressing into my thigh. Luckily I managed to contain that thought.

"I want to make you feel safe," I managed to say, out of nowhere. Of course it was true, but it was hardly one of the first nine things that popped into my head.

"Quick, eight more. Go, go."

He didn't ask for much, did he? "I want to make sure you're always warm and as happy as I can make you," I said, getting confident that I could do this properly now. Seven more kind, non-sexual, non-threatening things I wanted for my Little One. I could do it.

"You're awful nice to me aren't you? Hurry up, two at once this time."

He was going to kill me.

"Hurry, hurry!"

He was beginning to laugh at me. His lips were _right there_ in front of my face as he chuckled mercilessly, and I could swear, with every answer I gave him he was bringing them closer to me.

Two at once, I could do that. "I want to ... keep you well fed, and healthy ... and ..."

Block. Shit. Shit! Shit.

"Quick! Two at once! Go!"

He was perilously close to touching lips with me. I fucked up.

"I want to kiss you," I breathed.

All of a sudden he was on me, distracted as I was. His whole body pressed flush against mine, including his rather definite arousal. His lips pressed into mine frantically, suddenly, crushing into me with this new, vibrant, giddy happy energy that seemed to have consumed him. And then it was over.

"Oh, I'm sorry," he said, with a definite edge of sarcasm, and I was terrified for a moment that he was going to hate me _now_ instead of in the morning. Instead he burst into giggles. "I ruined it for you," he said.

I cleared my throat, lips still tingling. "Believe me, you ruined _nothing_," I said.

He chuckled. "No, no, I distinctly ruined it," he insisted. "_You_ wanted to kiss _me_. Clearly _I_ kissed _you_. I ought to make it up to you."

I tried. I tried so hard to make him stop. I really did. "No, you don't have to -" He shushed me with a hand over my mouth. And then he pressed his forehead and nose to mine.

"I do," he whispered. "So here's what I'll do," he said, smiling again, all bright and cheery as the sunrise. "I'm going to close my eyes." He did. "Tilt my head back, just a little." All the while with his hand against my lips. He settled himself on the pillow, his eyes peacefully closed and his head back, in the absolute perfect position for kissability. "I'm going to take your hand," he said, and moved his hand from my lips slowly down to try to find mine.

I gave it to him. I wanted to know where this was going, crazy or not.

"I'm going to put your hand right here," he said, placing my palm at his neck, where my fingers would be in the perfect position to tilt his head back if need be.

All the while he spoke with his eyes closed.

"And I'm going to grab your collar, like this," he said, fisting both hands in either side of it, "so that I can try to pull you closer. And now I'm going to open my lips, just a little bit, and let you do what you wanted."

His lips parted, ever so slightly.

What was I to do? Really? In that situation, was there really any other option? I leant in and kissed him. As I did, he smiled widely, his hands in my shirt trying to yank me closer. I didn't protest. How could I protest?

And then one of his legs was around my hips, our groins met, and I took a sharp intake of breath, fearing his reaction to ... my reaction.

Instead, he chuckled against my lips, opened his mouth wider, and tilted his head farther back.

I floated for a while, lost in the pleasure of it, as he made little encouraging moans against my mouth. At some point one of his hands left my shirt and wound around my shoulder, and he used it to pull himself in closer to me.

I feel it important to clarify that _he_ instigated the grinding. I was perfectly happy - more than happy - with just kissing. Clearly he was not. By this point, however, my concern of '_He's going to hate you in the morning,'_ was well and truly in the back of my mind, along with most of my conscious brain.

He wrapped his leg around my hip and pressed furtively into me. He also refused to stop kissing me. Quite literally, in fact.

When I ran out of breath, he didn't seem to care, kissing on and following me with his lips when I drew back. When _he_ ran out breath, he would back off ever so slightly, lips still on mine, and while he intook breath he would say things like "Never, ever stop kissing me,", "Why are you so good at this?", "Oh, _pleeease_,", and my personal favorite: "I want your tongue. In my mouth. Now."

Really. What was I supposed to do?

And when kissing while on the pillows became an issue, and I realised we had been slowly gravitating to a position where I was on top of him, all of a sudden it became clear to me that I had absolutely no say in this whatsoever.

He stopped kissing me only to bite my bottom lip cheekily, and during my surprise at that he managed to wrap his other leg around me, all the while thrusting or wriggling or doing _something_ with his lower body to create friction with mine.

And then we were in a position where it would be oh-so-easy, and he was clearly oh-so-willing. All I would have to do was get out of my trousers, which he would be more than willing to help with, and then I would be right there, ready to slide inside.

No. Not going to happen. _He's going to hate you in the morning, remember?_

No. I would not do this. I would not take advantage of him in this way.

Before that time, I had no concept of how impossible it is to back away from someone when they had both their legs wrapped around your waist. All it actually did was make my groin thrust into him harder when I gave up on it.

This of course just made him moan, very, very loudly.

His legs tightened even further around my hips, as he broke the kiss, and locked eyes with me.

"I want you. Inside me. Now."

Which left me wondering whether or not _I_ was the one really in the dominant position. Clearly he was getting everything he wanted.

"I don't want to hurt you," I said, stuck in this horrible position where I too really wanted to be inside him, _now_, but I also really didn't.

He bit my bottom lip again. This time around, it didn't surprise me so much and actually really aroused me. A lot.

"Then man up, get some oil and get your fingers in first," he said, as if that was even the kind of hurt I was talking about. "Come to think about it," he said, moving his head up to whisper in my ear. "I might really like that." I felt him grinning against my earlobe, and then the sudden swipe of his tongue against the top curve of my ear. "Your fingers might be _exactly_ what I want right now."

Just fingers. Maybe if it was just fingers, it wouldn't be so bad in the morning. Maybe if I gave him the best night of his life, and only used my fingers, he would only _loathe_ me in the morning. We could put off hate until lunch.

And then he seemed to forget all about the mention of oil, grabbed my hand from behind his head and began sucking on my fingers.

It was about that point that I stopped trying to restrain myself. It probably happened between when I first saw them disappearing into his mouth and when I felt his tongue sliding between my index and middle finger.

When he pulled my hand from his mouth, and pressed it down between us, there was none of what I had imagined, when I had dared to dream of this happening.

_"Are you ready?" I would have said, kissing him softly on the lips. "I know you've been hurt, but you know, I love you anyway."_

_He would have nodded, smiled at me, and said breathlessly, "I trust you," as I pressed inside him with a single well-oiled finger._

Instead, he had my fingers at his entrance, bit down on my earlobe in the most excruciatingly painful-and-yet-incredibly-arousing manner, causing me to squeeze my eyes shut in pain, then keep them shut as I tried to curb the arousal it had brought on, and then I realised that two of my barely wet fingers were in him.

He bit me again, softer this time, and wriggled his bottom. "Touch me," he said.

I had assumed that he had been raped. But it seemed ever so unlikely at the time, as he thrust down onto my hand. He kissed, licked and sucked on my ear, and only stopped when I gave him my lips to do the same to. As I swiped my tongue over his, and he trapped it with his teeth, moaning, I considered the notion that it was going to be worth it.

A life of hatred - a short life, if my suspicions of him being a Seer were correct - for what was clearly going to be the best sex I would ever have. In the morning he would call me a rapist.

Versus a life of hatred anyway, and in the morning he would make jokes about my capabilities as a man.

_To hell with it,_ I thought, and began spreading my fingers gingerly inside him, stretching slowly. I didn't actually want to hurt him, and he seemed a bit over-excited.

I needn't have worried. It turned out that my fingers were exactly what he needed. He stretched out, arching his back as I stretched him, moaning for all he was worth. "Please," he said breathlessly.

I pushed a third into him. He squirmed, moaning again, before he was eagerly thrusting up and down on them again.

"Please," he said again. "Touch it, touch me, please."

I acquiesced, taking his bottom lip between my teeth for a bit of revenge, before curling my fingers and mercilessly attacking his prostate. He gasped, then began alternating gasps and moans as I brought my fingers almost out then all the way back inside to touch him where he had asked.

Somewhere in this I managed to find a rhythm. I brought him close to orgasm, but not quite there, and watched him, with my fingers deep inside him, touching and stroking and prodding while he let out helpless little moans. I knew I was close to my limit already, even having barely been touched, and that after the image of him like this under my ministrations it wouldn't take very much to finish me. So I focused on him, his pleasure, what he wanted. It made me happy to see him that way, lost in pleasure, and I did enjoy the notion that he had not been hurt so badly that he couldn't accept pleasure anymore.

"No," he said, quietly, and I stilled immediately, near ready to bolt off the bed and to the other side of the room.

"No?" I repeated, tense and ready to leave the moment he said to get off him.

He looked up at me from underneath me, his head on the pillows, one of his hands still fisted in my shirt. It was more than wrinkled now.

"I want you to come inside me, please," he whispered, his eyes glazed over and his voice quiet.

I withdrew my hand from inside him. Something in his voice, no longer confident or laughing, just pleading, needy, loving, had me giving him whatever he wanted. Not to mention the request itself was extraordinarily erotic.

He helped my trousers down, but only enough so that my arousal was free. I was still mostly clothed, but for my need and bare ass.

He wrapped his legs back around me and one arm over my shoulder, the other around my waist, both sets of fingers curling against my back. "Please," he said again, in that same voice, which I then decided I needed to dub as the _I cannot deny him anything asked thusly_ voice.

I pressed into him slowly, biting my lip to maintain composure. This would not last long.

He moaned in what seemed more like a whimper than a moan, arching his back, panting shallowly.

Once inside him, he relaxed. His every muscle simply went loose, his head fell back on the pillows, his eyes closed. I feared he had passed out again, but he opened his eyes shortly after, staring at me and smiling. Not passed out, it seemed. Apparently it was just an incredible relief to have me inside him.

He began pressing down on me shortly afterward, tightening his legs, and using the _You may not deny me a thing_ voice to beg me to move. It was a soft voice, serious, quiet, pleading, vulnerable. I had only ever heard it before when we had been in Geordi's living room, and he had called out to me, calling me Master.

I was done in four slow thrusts. He was done in two.

His orgasm was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. He closed his eyes, opened his mouth, and moaned, bringing his head forward so that his forehead bumped against mine. I didn't get to witness the whole thing. Mine had been building for a time, and I was soon over the edge, and giving him what he had wanted, coming inside of him.

I came to before he did, and used the time, rather than bathing in post-orgasm euphoria, to take a deep long look at the hole I had dug myself into.

Or rather, he had dug me into.

We had dug me into.

No, I decided. I could not blame this on him. He was lost, confused, and I had just completely taken advantage of him. I felt like a cad of a human being. He was the only thing I cared about, the only person I had ever loved, would ever love, and _he was going to hate me in the morning_.

"Stay?" I heard that soft, vulnerable voice again. He kissed me on the throat, moving to rest his head on my shoulder.

"Okay," I said, resolving not to budge an inch from my position, still on top of him.

"Will you ... say something nice to me? Please?" he asked. I felt even more like a horrible person.

"I love you," I said truthfully. "I love everything about you." I lifted my head to look at him. "I love your eyes, and your mouth and your voice, and your hair, I love your hair a lot," I said.

He smiled a bit, taking a deep breath as though steadying himself, and looking me in the eye.

"I even love the way you look at me without ever keeping your eyes still, always moving your gaze from one spot to the next," I said. "I can't help it, it's you, and I love it."

He broke out into an open, toothy smile. "Okay," he said. "That was exactly what I wanted to hear. Thank you."

"You're welcome," I said.

He slowly unwrapped his legs from my sides, and I took that as my cue to get off him. I stripped off my shirt, used it to clean myself up, then helped him clean off his thighs and belly, then threw it across the room. He lay himself close to my side, put his head on my shoulder, and held close to me. "Will you please," - and I considered interrupting him with the words "Yes, anything you want," but decided not to be rude, and let him finish - "be here when I wake up?"

"Yes," I said. "Anything you want. Anything for you."

He smiled against my shoulder. "I ... if I'm confused ... or ... bad ... in the morning, just ... make me look at you, please."

"Okay," I said. Something to try, at least.

He settled down very quickly, in my arms. As I closed my eyes, to try to follow him into sleep, he blinked himself awake and said: "Oh, and, I love you too."

After the obvious confused hour of rambling inside my head while I tried to figure out what the hell had just happened, I slept like a baby, in between three premonitions. I would later decipher them, and in the months after, I would learn that one of them saved a woman from a rape, another prevented the theft of desperately needed medicines, and another prevented a war.

_Primary Mission: ... Success ... ?_

_New Primary Mission: Figure out what the fuck just happened._


	16. What Just Happened Part 1

**A/N: **Thanks for all the reviews :)

CircleKV12: Is this really himself? Is it? So far we've seen, like, 3 Duos. Dream Duo, this Duo, crazy ass kill-me-and-yourself Duo. Who knows what's real :P As for explaining things ... heh. Yeah that's gonna be fun.

Snowdragonct: Too good to be true was precisely what I was aiming for.

Emily Crane: Sort of. Their different behaviors are eventually explained, but they have well and truly come out as Shinigami Duo and Zero Quatre.

**Trowa**

I had slept the night in my own bed for the first time in weeks. Since I'd threatened to tie Quatre up, I hadn't dared go near him, instead hoping for time, a Seer's best friend, to smooth things over.

With Heero's return, I doubted my sleeping in Zechs' antechamber would go without reprimand. I had been able to pull it off before, when, as the only Seer in the castle I needed to work extra hard to protect the King, so sleeping nearby just made sense. But Heero would see right through it, know I was avoiding Quatre, and then he'd either guilt me into attempting (and failing) to fix things, or he'd just poke Otto, who would then poke Wufei, who would then sit me down with a very large, boring, depressing book about Seers and Binds and demand I read an example of what happens when a Seer lets their Bind get the better of them. I'd once told him I would prefer a lecture, and then he had started lecturing me and then made me read the damn book anyway.

Heero was immune to all this because he'd already read all the stupid books.

Quatre was asleep when I got in, far after dinner time, and not a peep or a whisper came from Heero's room, so I assumed they were asleep. It was about the time of night for it. So instead of seeing him to see how things were, I went to bed. Quatre lay in his bed, in his clothes, seemingly too lazy to get dressed for bed.

Trying to be nice, I took off his slippers and tucked him in to bed, before shackling him in so he didn't try to kill me. At this he stirred, grunting, and I watched in shock as he seemed to be fighting off a nightmare.

He couldn't be thinking of me, could he? Dreaming that I had actually tied him to my bed and was now forcing his lips open, forcing my tongue into his mouth -

I fought not to gag, pushing the thought from my mind before I could finish it. Of course he wasn't dreaming of me. I couldn't do or say anything that would give Quatre a nightmare. He was probably dreaming about his father locking him in the basement.

I placed a hand on his forehead to check for a fever, and finding none I tried to gently nudge him awake, wanting him out of his bad dream.

Bad dream with his _father_. Not me.

Instead of waking up, he grunted again, his wrinkled brow softened, and he slept on. I stayed with him for a moment, trying to be tender, and when I was convinced he wasn't going to start dreaming again, I went to bed.

He woke me in the night a few times with whimpers or panting, of the frightened, caged animal kind. I tried to ignore it.

By the time morning finally came, he was still sleeping fitfully, and he either hadn't woken since I came in or had ignored me and gone back to sleep. I heard a few soft noises on Heero's side of the wall, and put my ear to the wall to listen, convincing myself it was because I was a good friend, not because I was trying to live vicariously through him. I hoped his love life was better than mine, though I knew better.

All I heard was Heero's sleep grunting, something he did when he had bad premonitions. He'd once groaned so loudly he woke himself up during a bad premonition about a lighthouse fire. He then had to try and trance to figure out which lighthouse it was because he'd stopped the original premonition halfway through.

I finished dressing and unshackled Quatre, who didn't even move, then I left to go shadow the King again. He'd wanted to have breakfast with me that morning.

Otto raised his morning brew mug to me as I left. "You have to try this sourdough, Lord Barton. It tastes like fucking _chicken_!"

I forced out a chuckle and left without trying it. It's not a good idea to keep a King waiting, after all.

**Heero**

I was in the field again. I stared at Little One, who glared at me with one cocked eyebrow.

"You moron," he said. "You're the biggest, fattest idiot I've ever had the misfortune to meet."

"No," I said. "No, I can't be seeing this. If I'm seeing this ... where are you? What happened? Why didn't I wake up?"

He smirked. "And why would I want to answer any of your idiot questions?"

"Little One, please - "

"Your Little One priviledges have well and truly been rescinded," he spat. "No more Little One for you. You can call me 'Oh Great And Merciless One' from now on."

"Where are you?" I yelled at him.

He laughed.

I woke up with a start, and if I weren't frozen solid in shock, I would have raced immediately down the stairs to scream that he was gone. Instead, I was frozen, shocked that I could have slept through his capture or escape, and thus had time to comprehend that Little One was lying on my chest.

I'd had a nightmare about him. A waking nightmare about the hate and rejection I was about to experience because I was the biggest, fattest idiot that couldn't say no.

Little One was mumbling in his sleep. He'd never done it intelligibly before, it was always toned down, either feeble or slurred or under his breath. That morning was a different matter. Though it was slurred, it was loud enough for me to hear and understand it.

"S'not. I didn't do nuthin'," he said, grinning in his sleep, chuckling. "Father, I didn't do nuthin. Put those away. Stick em back in the back where they belong."

He cackled in his sleep, giving the impression that it was a good dream - or memory. Whoever his father had been, he wasn't someone bad.

Little One twitched, laughing loudly, his body convulsing, and I actually think he laughed himself awake.

I stared at him, my face surely a comical picture of befuddlement.

He stared at me, wide eyed for a moment, then looked about the room. "I was dreaming," he said. "He was tickling me with his feathers. Arse." He picked his hand out from under the covers and yawned loudly into it, scratching his head and still wet hair, then he blinked his eyes and startled, looking at me like I was some sort of demon possessed.

He stared at me in some sort of confused horror. Scared to say something wrong, I refrained from saying anything.

Eventually he pushed the hand he'd yawned into toward me, slowly poking me in the chest, in a manner that reminded me of the way a child pokes a dead animal with a stick.

His confused horror expression turned into shock, and he intook a breath, now staring at me as if I were some sort of apparition.

"You're here," he said quietly. "And last night ... last night ... _happened_."

I gulped. Here comes the hate. Hesitantly, I nodded. "You asked me to stay," I said quietly, as if whispering would stop him from screaming insults at me.

Instead, at my nod, and my words, his jaw dropped open. "You're here because I asked?" he asked incredulously.

I nodded numbly.

He bolted upright in bed, but not out of bed, just sitting there, staring numbly at nothing in particular, his jaw still open. His hair plastered to his back, still wet.

"This has _never_ happened before," he said suddenly. "And believe me, alot of things have happened to me. This is weird."

Confused, upset, and still terrified he was going to hate me, I voiced my primary concern. "Are you telling me no one has ever stayed with you ... after?"

He looked back at me, his expression that of a fish out of water. "This is entirely new territory," he told me. "I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing."

I gaped at him. "Are you asking me for ... instructions?"

He slowly nodded. "This is awkward. Really awkward. When does it stop being awkward?"

I sat up and ran a hand through my hair. "That's ... a good question," I admitted. "Well, usually at this point of awkwardness, one of us would leave. But that isn't going to happen," I said hastily, trying to find an appropriate way to explain a 'morning after'.

"It isn't?" he asked, blinking.

"I wouldn't have stayed if I'd intended to just abandon you when I was done with you," I said, a little too harshly, possibly a little too forcefully. He pulled back. "And I won't have you leaving either. You need to be coddled. You said so yesterday when you made me tuck you in."

He gaped at me. "Made you?" he asked.

"No," I said, fisting my hands in my hair. "I'm ruining everything. You didn't make me, I was happy to - "

"Like you were happy to stay with me all night?"

"Exactly," I said, after analyzing the question, worried it was a trap.

He continued to look at me as if I were some sort of ghost, like he did not believe any of it was real. "_Why_?" he asked.

It was then that it hit me. He _had_ been raped. He'd just been trained to treat it like sex. He didn't understand that what had happened last night had been based entirely around love. At least, it had on my part.

This left me with an even worse problem. According to him, what I'd just done with him was just as bad as whatever Geordi had been doing in the cellar.

I couldn't find words, so I simply defaulted to: "I love you."

He blinked a few times, staring back at me. "I love you too," he said, warily, but I could sense truth in it. He meant it. Or at least, he thought he did.

He scooted up the bed and sat by my side. "So, does this mean ... you're always going to tuck me in and always going to be here after we have sex?"

"Would you like me to?" I asked.

"Does a bear shit in the woods?" he asked back.

I stared at him, pausing. "Yes?" I said, not really sure what was going on.

He looked at me, grinned and nodded slowly. "There's your answer," he said. After a moment, he leaned in closer and put his head on my shoulder. "Does this mean that what you said earlier about painting the ceiling was also true?"

"Yes," I said. "If, when, I can trust you up a ladder, you may paint the ceiling," I stated again. "That was our agreement."

"Huh," he said, not really a question, not really a statement, more of an expression of confusion. "Okay," he said, shaking his head slightly, as if he didn't really get it but would go along with it anyway. Another moment passed, and then he scooted forward, lay himself down, and put his head on my lap, closing his eyes. "What do you get out of this?" he asked.

I shook my head, exasperated. Like the sex hadn't been more than enough. "I get the pleasure of your company," I said, letting my hands fall to his head, to pet his still wet hair.

He scrunched up his nose. "That's not much," he said. "I've been in my company. It's not that great."

I sighed. "Yesterday was wonderful," I said. "Last night, when I gave you a bath, when you let me tuck you in, it was wonderful. And I'd do it all again. You're wonderful company."

"I'm wonderful sex, that's what I am," he clarified. "You'd do it again, anyone would. You got laid."

I shook my head, my hands tensing in his hair. "You were wonderful sex," I agreed. "But you were also wonderful outside of sex."

He stayed silent for a moment again, his eyes staring at my feet. "Actually," he said, his voice creaking a bit. "It wasn't really that wonderful," he said, quietly.

My ego deflated. I'd hoped, after all that time pleasuring him with my fingers, that wonderful would be exactly how he would have described it. Surely, in his eyes, last night was good. Surely I was a better lay than the drunk bastard who kept him locked in a cellar.

"I mean," he said suddenly, as if sensing what he'd said had hurt me. "I didn't really ... You did all the work, come to think of it," he said. He lifted himself up off my lap, to look at me face to face. I could see in his eyes that some sort of light had dawned.

"If ... If I hadn't _asked_," he said, ultra quiet, "Would you have..."

"No," I said. "I would never hurt you."

He shook his head. "This hasn't got anything to do with hurt," he said, pressing on. "If I hadn't asked, would you have just kept going? Would you have just ... kept fingering me ... without a care in the world for yourself?"

I swallowed nervously. "Yes," I said.

He looked about to cry, and blinked back tears. "I ... " he started, looking away, staring at the bed sheets.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I don't really understand what's happened. I would _never _mean to hurt you or make you upset. You were just impossible to resist - "

"Impossible to resist?!" he said, whipping his head back to me and gaping. "You _did_ resist me! If I hadn't asked, you wouldn't have done it!"

Tense silence reigned. I thought he was mad at me, but tears started falling, and I didn't know what to do, as I sat there, dealing with the aftermath of my inability to say no.

The whole thing suddenly took a turn for the better, when he launched himself at me, throwing his arms around my shoulders, his face in my neck. He grasped at my hair as he seated his legs, straddling me. "You seriously wanted my _permission_?" he asked me quietly. "Without permission ... you were just going to give me whatever I wanted? Pleasure me without even thinking of yourself?"

I stared at his neck, felt his tense arms around me, his voice, sounding still as if it were about to cry, his hands in my hair, shaking slightly. "I still would," I said.

He pulled back, his hands on my shoulders. "I _need_ to kiss you now," he stated, before leaning in, asking permission with his eyes. I brought my arms up around him, holding him close, as he took the final gap between us and meshed our lips together.

I took control, as our kissing last night had taught me he liked, and I slowly pushed my tongue past his lips, then his teeth. He grabbed my hair, trying to pull my head in closer, but I was already in as close as I could go, and he just ended up yanking on my hair. I ignored it, and pushed my tongue as far into his mouth as I could get it, a move which last night had caused him to moan endlessly. It hit the spot, and he latched his lips on, sucking hard on my tongue, compressing with his teeth slightly.

He pulled back suddenly, releasing my tongue, and I licked my lips.

"And now," he said, breathlessly, "Now you're just going to ... stay with me?"

"Yes," I said simply.

That one little word actually made him moan. He pushed himself closer to me, resting his forehead against mine, and I knew from the pained expression on his face, he was going to cry.

"I love you," I said, and it tipped him over.

He let out a little choked sob, his hands in my hair tightening again. I increased my hold, applying gentle pressure, keeping him firmly on my lap, in my arms. He let his head drop back onto my shoulder.

"I love you," he said between sobs. Then again, between more sobs, and again, and again. A mantra of, "I love you I love you I love you I love you," started, interrupted by crying and hiccups.

During this, I simply held him, stroked his back firmly, and told him I loved him too. After about thirty seconds, I got a premonition.

It took no time, and I didn't even faze out. As I came back to, Little One was still in the middle of the word "love", which he had been halfway through when it started.

A few moments later and another hit, then another, then another. They were little things - simple things. Don't let the King eat the poisoned rice he would be offered next Tuesday. Tell the nobles's hunting party to watch out for a particularly aggressive bear. King Noventa across the sea would be very, very open to any trade offers regarding the herb qualtrice in three months.

Little One eventually stopped repeating his "I love you" mantra, and that seemed to halt the premonitions. He only stopped it though so he could bite down on my neck, hard.

I jerked, but contained myself. He'd bitten me last night, too, on the lips and ear, and tongue - though he seemed to prefer sucking on my tongue. He was very mouthy. After the initial pain fled and left a simple soreness, I decided not even to question it.

My body, however, decided to poke Little One in the ass.

He sat up suddenly off my lap. "I ... I don't want - "

"Sorry," I said hastily. "I didn't mean to - that happened completely out of my control."

I leaned back a bit, forcing myself to breathe steadily and think of _anything_ that wasn't sexy.

Little One took it better than I had expected, cracking a shaky grin. "Sorry," he said. "I should have expected it. You love being bit."

My brows knitted. This was news to me. His teeth play last night had been endearing, cute even, and it had kept me off balance with a bit of pain, but the strength of that bite should not have aroused me. And yet, with blood rushing around my ears, among other places, and a blush on my face of extreme embarrassment, I could not deny that it had.

Little One pressed his face back into my neck, nuzzling the bite, but not resting back down into my lap. I was grateful. I didn't need the extra stimulation there.

Little One knew I liked being bitten. The mere thought that I liked being bitten was rejected as stupid by my brain - who likes being bitten, seriously? Alas, there it was. Little One knew what I liked, and, judging from my previous reaction, he knew what I liked a hell of a lot.

How the hell did a boy who had _one_ sexual encounter with me know my body better than I did?

"Sorry," he said, kissing my neck, all the way up to my hairline, into my ear. "I love you," he said, then kissed back down, soothing my wounded skin. It tinged with small pain at every touch of his lips. I felt my erection twitch. "I don't want to do this right now," Little One said quietly, as if scared to even say it.

"You never have to," I said.

He smiled into my shoulder, and clutched me to him tightly. "Will you tuck me back in? I wore myself out."

I nodded, kissing his still wet hair.

He clambered off me, lying back onto the bed, and watched me as I dutifully pulled the blankets up over him, tucked them in up around his nose, and leaned in to kiss his forehead. "Goodnight, Little One," I said, smiling into him, then kissed his forehead repeatedly before pulling away.

I could see him smiling at me through his eyes. "You learn well," he said quietly, looking at the blankets, indicating my skills at tucking in.

I smiled back. "My teacher was very thorough."

He shifted, curling up. "Love you," he said, looking me straight in the eye. His eyes held absolutely no trace of lies. No spite, no hate. He spoke the words, and looked at me, with absolute, utter devotion, and for the first time, I didn't feel even the slightest tinge of doubt.

I was loved.

I slowly laid back down beside him, grinning inanely, and watched him close his eyes to rest.

I was loved.

The premonition slammed into me with tidal force, and while it happened, I had no mind of my own, nothing at all. I couldn't have told you my name, or the colour of the sky, or even what the premonition was about.

Afterward, time had passed. It was well into the morning. Little One was fast asleep beside me, smiling in his sleep. I was shuddering, convulsing a bit, as I tried to piece together what I'd seen.

Colours flashed into my memory - gold and black - and something about a knife glinting in the dark. There was an old man not to be trusted, a pair of bright, luminescent white wings, a shimmering wall made up entirely of rainbow, shattering into pieces. An innocent rabbit grabbed by the neck. A dead man lying on the floor. A bear trap. A sundial, lifting up and turning.

I looked at it, all the things I had seen, a completely unravelable mystery. Then I took a shaky, deep breath, and threw away the pair of white wings. They were unrelated. I glanced to Little One sleeping softly, obliviously, beside me.

The wings were about him. God only knew what they were about, but they were his.

As for the rest ... the rainbow wall was undecipherable, and I threw that away too ... everything else then smashed together into place easily, something that had never before happened, especially not with a premonition of that kind, with nothing solid, only imagery.

Gold represented payment. Someone had been hired to grab an innocent rabbit by the neck, resulting in the dead man on the floor. The King, lying dead on the floor, strangled. He would walk into a trap. A knife in the dark - betrayal. The colour black - that of King Noin's hair.

The sundial, turning, spinning. I sat up, careful not to disturb Little One. I rushed down the stairs.

The King was not _going_ to walk into a trap. He had already walked into a trap.

The notion crossed my mind that no premonition this clear, this powerful, this important, and this easy to understand, had ever happened in any known history I had ever read.

"You just missed Trowa," Otto said as I passed the guard room. "You should try this bread. It tastes like chicken!"


	17. What Just Happened part 2

**A/N:** I would really appreciate any constructive criticism anyone has on this chapter. It's supposed to be confusing. It's timey-wimey wibbly-wobbly shit. But it's still supposed to be somewhat followable, and I'm not 100% sure I pulled that off.

Thanks in advance.

**Heero**

I thundered into the King's bedroom. The guards at his door were fast asleep. Trowa, also, lay knocked out on the floor, the King in the midst of a knife fight. He was losing. As I watched, the silver knife from my premonition plunged into his gut and twisted. I knew it would be fatal and slow.

When I saw the man fighting the King, and he saw me, his reaction was to fling a throwing knife straight at me. My reaction was to dodge it, pick up a decorative vase, and throw it at him.

When it smashed into his head with _perfect_ precision, I was a little bit confused, as I am both a bad shot and bad catch, but thanked my luck and recently improved aim.

I went straight to the King, who was looking at me with wide eyes. "I had him, you know," he said, without a twinge of pain in his voice. I looked down at his stomach wound, which was ... not there.

The King looked at me oddly, then rushed to Trowa.

"He was poisoned. I think I got some, too - "

"Sanka," I said. "You don't know it, but you're immune. He's not."

Zechs looked at me. I shrugged. "Not blind anymore," I explained. "Trowa will be fine. He'll wake up if you slap him hard enough."

Wordlessly, Zechs slapped Trowa to, increasing force until he woke up.

"The guardsman - Olfrich, he had the men at your door poisoned. You should have him hanged before he tries to escape," I said.

"Old man Olfrich?" Zechs said incredulously. "Seriously?"

Trowa sputtered, blinking. "What?" he asked.

"Why aren't you bleeding?" I asked the King.

"Bleeding?" he queried. "Heero, I was beating him."

"Beating him? He knifed you in the gut!"

Terse silence reigned while the King looked at me in complete confusion.

Trowa started counting.

"One."

It was an old trick, one he had taught me when he had first suspected that I was prescient, not just capable of premonition. He would count to ten, and I would stop him when he reached ten. He would end up getting stopped somewhere around nine - letting us know that I was living about one second into the future, my normal place of residence. I waited until he got to ten. "Stop," I said.

"Stop what?" Trowa asked.

I gaped at him. "You just - oh. Oh. I'm more than ten in."

"More than ten in what?"

I took a deep breath. I was more than ten seconds ahead of time. I had never been this far ahead before. The King _hadn't_ been knifed in the gut. I'd thrown a vase at his attacker at least ten seconds prior to his being knifed in the gut.

"Count to twenty, when you hit twenty I'll say 'Stop'," I instructed.

Light dawned on Trowa's face as to what had just happened. He had been going to start doing the counting trick, then I'd stopped him before he even had the idea. Then confusion hit. Or perhaps it was about to hit, somewhere ten or more seconds in the future. I saw his eyes flick to my neck.

He started counting. I waited for him to get to twenty. "Stop."

He burst out laughing. "Are you _seeing_ this?" he asked Zechs, who was looking at me like I were some sort of mutant.

"What?" I asked.

"We'll go to sixty this time," Trowa said.

Diligently, I waited for his count. A full sixty seconds passed, and when he finally hit sixty, I said stop.

The King shook his head in amazement.

"How far ahead?" I asked.

"The "N" in one," Zechs said dryly.

Trowa stared at me, and at my neck, then back at me. "Wherever you are, Yuy, you're more than a minute ahead."

I furrowed my brow. I was going to be exhausted by the end of today, if I was more than a full minute ahead of time.

Prescient Sight was often referred to as the most useless of Seer's gifts, as it often confused more than aided, as had happened today. I had never been more than one second in the future, so the morning's events were highly confusing.

Trowa was not prescient. He had double vision - when Quatre allowed it. Trowa would see current events through one eye and future events through the other, at anywhere between three and five seconds ahead, meaning his best place was far away, watching. He couldn't hear the future, or feel it. His double vision would not stop a knife in the back.

Other Seers had double ears - allowing them to hear conversations in the future, through one ear, and current through the other. This took some mastery, as the Seer would need to get within hearing range of the conversation several minutes before the conversation would take place.

Most Seers just had very heightened intuition, no double vision or ears, but _all_ Seers had premonitions, though some were restricted to waking premonitions and others could only dream them.

I was Prescient, the rarest of them all. All of my senses, and, theoretically, my entire body, operated at a different moment in time to everyone else. Usually, it was just a single second ahead, but today, apparently, I was further ahead than I thought Prescience could ever get me.

Upon doing any action at all, the Prescience would pick and choose where in the timeline my action would fall. As I had entered the room, I had seen the events that were destined to happen sixty or more seconds later than my entry. I had then thrown a vase. The magic had picked a point in time prior to the time I'd thrown it, and made me throw it then instead. It would always pick the moment in time most beneficial to me - which explained why I'd hit the man straight in the head. The magic had probably chosen an exact moment where he would move his head into my aim.

However, the moment the magic had decided to make me act, it had changed the timeline I'd already seen. Zechs was not stabbed, the throwing knife aimed at me was never even unsheathed. According to the others, I had probably just walked into the room, picked up a vase and thrown it. I may not even have aimed at all.

Prescience, though it now seemed _extraordinarily_ useful, wasn't really a big deal when I'd had it previously, as it had only been one second in the future. There was no way I would have been able to throw a vase to knock out the King's attacker within one second of him being stabbed.

Now that the timeline was changed, my Prescience was essentially pausing time in order to get me back to sixty seconds ahead - or it was simply increasing the capabilities of my brain. Every time I changed the timeline, my Prescience had to stick me back to the change - otherwise I'd be very confused. But the moment it sensed opportunity, it would speed up my brain's ability to process, or pause time (there really wasn't any way to be sure which one it was), until I were back into the full sixty seconds ahead of time.

But if I had a sixteen hour day, and made only sixty actions the Prescience decided to put sixty seconds in the past, then for me I'd be awake for seventeen hours.

This conclusion actually only served to make me happy. I could only sleep once every forty-eight hours anyway, usually. A longer day was only going to help me.

"Nevermind this counting," Trowa said. "You're somewhere over sixty seconds ahead, that's all we need at the moment."

Zechs looked at Trowa, stumped. "He's _never_ been this far ahead before. We aren't even going to ask why?"

Trowa raised an eyebrow pointedly, looking from me to the King. "If I had to take a guess," he said dryly, "I'd say it's due to the hickey on his neck."

Shocked, and a little bit appalled, I slapped my hand to where Little One had bit me that morning. He'd left a mark. Of course he'd left a mark, he'd _bit _me.

Zechs raised his eyebrows. "That's not a hickey," he said. "That's a bite mark. I _know_ what a hickey looks like."

Trowa sniggered. "Well if it's not a hickey, then I'm mighty confused. Especially because of all that beetroot all over Heero's face."

I looked away, flushed. It wasn't a hickey, I knew that. But it being there had brought forward memories of Little One, memories of my reaction to the mark on my shoulder that was clearly a bite mark and not a hickey. As I felt it, I could feel indentations of teeth. Not a hickey. I wouldn't let him give me a hickey. Finding out I liked to be bitten was bad enough.

"So stop me if I'm wrong," Trowa said. "But the King got attacked, you smashed a vase, and somewhere prior to this, your new Bind decided he liked you enough to ramp your Prescience way, _way_ into the future," he surmised.

I nodded. "It's a bit more complicated than that," I said.

"I'll bet it is," Trowa said. "Will someone explain to me why I was taking a nap on the floor?"

"You were poisoned," Zechs said. "What was it you said, Yuy?"

"Sanka," I said. "I don't know why I know that. I'm not questioning it. The King got it too, but he's immune. Don't know why. Not questioning that either."

"And you, what, came down here to say 'Hi, check out my hickey?', and found us here?"

"No, I had a premonition," I said, furrowing my brow. "Which hasn't gone exactly to plan."

"How do you mean?" Zechs asked.

"You were supposed to be getting strangled," I said, then, seeing blank looks, I decided to give over the entire dream. Trowa would get it.

"I got imagery. Gold, then black. I saw that knife - " I pointed to the one Zechs' assailant had been holding, " and an old man. I saw wings - unrelated, but decipherable, a completely weird and undecipherable rainbow wall being shattered. A rabbit being grabbed by the neck, a man dead on the floor, a bear trap and a sundial."

Zechs snorted. "And from that mess, you knew I was in danger?"

Trowa blinked, shocked. "A wall made of rainbow? Being shattered?"

"Is that familiar to you?" I asked. "I thought it was just a misleading factor."

Trowa shook his head. "You don't know already what that means?"

Zechs gasped. "Even I know what that means," he said, looking at Trowa's shocked and numb face. "But what did you mean, I should have been being strangled?"

"The knife symbolised betrayal - Olfrich's betrayal. The rabbit being picked up by the neck meant you would get strangled."

Trowa shook his head, getting up off the floor suddenly. "No it doesn't," he said. He shouldered past me and out the door, where he began running off.

"I don't understand," I said. "What do you know about rainbow walls?"

"You've never read Trowa's transcripts of his dreams with Quatre, have you?" he asked me quietly.

I shook my head. "Unnecessary invasion of privacy," I said.

Zechs sighed. "In those dreams, between Quatre and Trowa, there is a great big, semi-translucent wall made entirely of light and colour. Trowa can't get through it to get to Quatre. Recently Quatre's been trying to get through it to get to Trowa, but he can't get out either."

"Recently?" I asked, confused.

"Do not tell Quatre," Zechs said. "But the dreams between those two ... they've never stopped. As if there's something still keeping Trowa from obtaining Quatre."

I tried to comprehend that. Of course we couldn't tell Quatre - tell Quatre that the dreams are still there, and he'll believe it meant Trowa had the wrong person, especially seeing as Quatre (and all the other Binds ever recorded) fervently denied ever even having the dreams. The dreams should stop the moment the Seer obtained their Bind, and seeing as Quatre insisted he wasn't dreaming, it would just mean that Trowa had the wrong person, something Quatre had insisted was true from the beginning.

I stared after Trowa, wondering what could possibly have made him so upset.

Then I suddenly understood.

The bear trap. The King hadn't been lured into a trap, he had been in his rooms the entire time. I had been lured into a trap.

Zechs' attacker hadn't been intended to take him down - though I imagined they had hoped he would. He had been intended to draw attention.

One Seer, blind as a bat, had fallen for it and taken Sanka, falling asleep while he guarded his King. Another Seer had foreseen it and rushed to his King's aid. Meanwhile, a pair of wings, which I knew symbolised Little One, stood by while Quatre's rainbow wall got smashed. And then a rabbit got lifted by the neck - not strangled, lifted.

And this trap, this trap that I'd fallen into, had been set before I'd even had the dream.

"Oh, fuck!" I turned and bolted out the door, back up to the Tower, to try and stop events that I knew had already happened.

They'd taken Quatre and my Little One.


End file.
